Technozoic

OPEC: We want clean energy – ‘Increasing climate effects are an unquestionable reality’

2011-12-05T08:36:00.001-08:00

By Steve Hargreaves
5 December 2011

DOHA, Qatar (CNNMoney) -- Representatives from a half-dozen OPEC nations acknowledged Monday what many U.S. politicians won't -- that global warming is indeed a problem.

The representatives attending the World Petroleum Congress -- a week-long gathering of oil industry executives and government officials held every three years -- outlined steps their countries are taking to move toward cleaner, renewable energy.

"Increasing climate effects are an unquestionable reality," said Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar. "Developing clean and renewable resources is a goal fully supported by oil and gas exporters."

The opening session of the conference focused on ways the Middle East can help solve the world's energy challenge: dealing with the dependency on a dirty form of fuel that's becoming ever more expensive and will someday run out.

Of course, increasing investment in oil production is a top priority.

The minister from Bahrain detailed several new projects his country is undertaking, and the Kuwaiti minister said his country plans on investing $180 billion over the next two decades in oil field development.

With that investment, Kuwait hopes to increase its oil output to 4 million barrels a day from the current 3 million barrels a day as early as 2020.

But oil ministers from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates also talked about solar projects their nations are building. Those projects are still modest in size compared to projects in the United States, Spain or other places, but include plans for big expansion going forward. […]

OPEC members: We want clean energy

Technorati Tags: oil production,Peak Oil,OPEC,global warming,climate change

Judge orders Washington state and regional air agencies to regulate climate change pollution from Big Oil

2011-12-02T15:21:00.001-08:00

Posted by Elisabeth Keating on December 2, 2011 - 2:58pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : December 2, 2011

Challenge to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions from WA oil refineries advances

Seattle, WA —A federal judge today ruled that the Washington Department of Ecology, Northwest Clean Air Agency, and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have unlawfully failed to regulate climate change pollution from the five oil refineries operating in Washington State. Washington Environmental Council and Sierra Club initiated the lawsuit in March of this year. The lawsuit claimed that state agencies have the duty to regulate climate change pollution from oil refineries because this pollution fits within the definition of “air contaminants” in Washington’s State Implementation Plan, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is enforceable under the federal Clean Air Act.

All five oil refineries in Washington are owned by big oil companies—BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil, Tesoro and U.S. Oil. Collectively, these oil refineries are responsible for six to eight percent of total state-wide greenhouse gas emissions, primarily in the form of nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide. The oil refineries were represented in the lawsuit by the Western States Petroleum Association, which intervened in the litigation.

The conservation groups praised the decision by U.S. District Chief Judge Marsha J. Pechman, who ordered the state agencies to begin the regulatory process to begin controlling climate change pollution from the refineries. “We are heartened by this major step to address the serious air pollution and climate challenges our state faces now and in the near future. Oil refineries are the second-largest stationary source of dangerous climate change pollutants, and it is critical that they do everything they can to preserve the health and well-being of Washington communities.” said Becky Kelley of Washington Environmental Council. “We view this decision as a win for both the environment and the economy,” said Aaron Robins of the Sierra Club. “There are numerous options for reducing climate change pollution from oil refineries that can help protect our environment while making refining operations more efficient and creating new jobs.”

The lawsuit claimed that the state agencies had violated their obligation under Washington’s State Implementation Plan to determine and impose “reasonably available control technologies” on refineries to control climate change pollution. The Court agreed, holding that “Washington’s [State Implementation Plan] requires the Agencies to regulate GHGs.” “The Court affirmed that Washington has the authority and the obligation to address impacts from climate change pollution,” said Janette Brimmer, an attorney with Earthjustice. “Our state can no longer afford to have our regulators sit on their hands and wait for the federal government deal with the issue—it is time for our state regulators to follow the law and implement long-overdue measures to protect our climate ."

Earthjustice and the law firm of Ziontz, Chestnut, Varnell, Berley & Slonim represented the Sierra Club and Washington Environmental Council in the lawsuit. The decision from Judge Pechman is available at: http://wecprotects.org/issues-campaigns/climate-change/judges-order-in-oil-refineries-litigation/at_download/file

Contact:

Janette Brimmer, Earthjustice, (206) 343-7340 ext. 1029

Joshua Osborne-Klein, Ziontz, Chestnut, Varnell, Berley & Slonim, (206) 448-1230

Aaron Robins, Sierra Club Washington State Chapter, (425) 442-6726 Becky Kelley, Washington Environmental Council, (206) 631-2602

Judge Orders State and Regional Air Agencies to Regulate Climate Change Pollution From Big Oil

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,oil production,carbon reduction,pollution,carbon dioxide

World’s first vertical forest under construction in Milan

2011-10-30T10:35:00.001-07:00

This design is close to the full realization of an idea that occurred to me around a decade ago, as I pondered how to house 10 billion humans and still have a biosphere. I built a genetic algorithm framework for modeling these kinds of structures, which was used in Gennaro Senatore: Morphogenesis of Spatial Configurations. It’s amazing to see these kinds of structures actually being built; it’s as though the 21st century has finally arrived.

By Diane Pham
16 October 2011

We've reported extensively on green vertical towers that integrate plant life into their facade, but unlike many of those designs, here's one that goes beyond being a mere concept. Designed by Stefano Boeri - architect, academic and former editor of design and architecture magazine Domus - his Bosco Verticale is a towering 27-story structure, currently under construction in Milan, Italy. Once complete, the tower will be home to the world's first vertical forest.

The Bosco Verticale is a system that optimizes, recuperates, and produces energy. Covered in plant life, the building aids in balancing the microclimate and in filtering the dust particles contained in the urban environment (Milan is one of the most polluted cities in Europe). The diversity of the plants and their characteristics produce humidity, absorb CO2 and dust particles, producing oxygen and protect the building from radiation and acoustic pollution. This not only improves the quality of living spaces, but gives way to dramatic energy savings year round.

Each apartment in the building will have a balcony planted with trees that are able to respond to the city’s weather — shade will be provided within the summer, while also filtering city pollution; and in the winter the bare trees will allow sunlight to permeate through the spaces. Plant irrigation will be supported through the filtering and reuse of the greywater produced by the building. Additionally, Aeolian and photovoltaic energy systems will further promote the tower’s self-sufficiency.

The design of the Bosco Verticale is a response to both urban sprawl and the disappearance of nature from our lives and on the landscape. The architect notes that if the units were to be constructed unstacked as stand-alone units across a single surface, the project would require 50,000 square meters of land, and 10,000 square meters of woodland. Bosco Verticale is the first offer in his proposed BioMilano, which envisions a green belt created around the city to incorporate 60 abandoned farms on the outskirts of the city to be revitalized for community use.

+ Stefano Boeri Architetti

Bosco Verticale in Milan Will Be the World’s First Vertical Forest

Technorati Tags: green architecture,carbon sequestration,solar power,wind power,sewage,carbon dioxide,carbon capture,carbon footprint

Global warming confirmed again, this time by independent study once backed by ‘skeptics’

2011-10-22T09:06:00.001-07:00

The results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study (BEST) are in, and to (almost) nobody’s surprise, Earth is warming. Even more compelling is how closely the BEST team’s surface temperature reconstruction matches that of NASA, NOAA, and the Hadley Centre.

The team’s lead is Richard Muller, who’s a well-known climate science skeptic, and for this reason denialists fully expected him to turn climate science on its head and find no global warming. Instead, his results provide strong confirmation that we do, in fact, know how to measure surface temperature correctly. Predictably, denialists have turned on Muller, accusing him of joining “The Team”.

Here’s his editorial in The Wall Street Journal, “The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism”. The most amusing denialist defense now is the claim that they never disputed the upward trend in the temperature record, only its cause. I’ve gone quite a few rounds with denialists over the years, and I can attest that “there is no warming trend” has always been one of the first arrows out of the quiver.

The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism

By RICHARD A. MULLER
21 OCTOBER 2011

[…] let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.

Over the last two years, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project has looked deeply at all the issues raised above. I chaired our group, which just submitted four detailed papers on our results to peer-reviewed journals. We have now posted these papers online at www.BerkeleyEarth.org to solicit even more scrutiny.

Our work covers only land temperature—not the oceans—but that's where warming appears to be the greatest. Robert Rohde, our chief scientist, obtained more than 1.6 billion measurements from more than 39,000 temperature stations around the world. Many of the records were short in duration, and to use them Mr. Rohde and a team of esteemed scientists and statisticians developed a new analytical approach that let us incorporate fragments of records. By using data from virtually all the available stations, we avoided data-selection bias. Rather than try to correct for the discontinuities in the records, we simply sliced the records where the data cut off, thereby creating two records from one.

We discovered that about one-third of the world's temperature stations have recorded cooling temperatures, and about two-thirds have recorded warming. The two-to-one ratio reflects global warming. The changes at the locations that showed warming were typically between 1-2ºC, much greater than the IPCC's average of 0.64ºC. […]

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism

A new analysis of the temperature record leaves little room for the doubters. The world is warming

Oct 22nd 2011

FOR those who question whether global warming is really happening, it is necessary to believe that the instrumental temperature record is wrong. That is a bit easier than you might think.

There are three compilations of mean global temperatures, each one based on readings from thousands of thermometers, kept in weather stations and aboard ships, going back over 150 years. Two are American, provided by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one is a collaboration between Britain’s Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (known as Hadley CRU). And all suggest a similar pattern of warming: amounting to about 0.9°C over land in the past half century.

To most scientists, that is consistent with the manifold other indicators of warming—rising sea-levels, melting glaciers, warmer ocean depths and so forth—and convincing. Yet the consistency among the three compilations masks large uncertainties in the raw data on which they are based. Hence the doubts, husbanded by many eager sceptics, about their accuracy. A new study, however, provides further evidence that the numbers are probably about right. […]

The heat is on

Hot Dog Bites Skeptical Man: Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Does “Confirm the Reality of Global Warming”

By Joe Romm
20 October 2011

Four new papers confirm that “the world is warming fast,” as the Economist summed it up. One paper finds that “the effect of urban heating on the global trends is nearly negligible.” Another finds that the work of the scientist-smearing denier Anthony Watts is pure BS.

Okay, that’s all “dog bites man” stuff, which is to say, not news in the least. The news is that this work was funded in part by Charles Koch, a leading funder of deniers, and two of the key authors are well-known smearers of climate scientists, Judith Curry and Richard Muller. Hot dog!

Climate Progress actually broke this story back in March — see Exclusive: Berkeley temperature study results “confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.” That was based on an email Climatologist Ken Caldeira sent me after seeing their preliminary results and a public talk by Muller confirming:

“We are seeing substantial global warming”

“None of the effects raised by the [skeptics] is going to have anything more than a marginal effect on the amount of global warming.”

But now the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study have completed their “independent” analysis of all of the temperature stations and found a rate of warming since the 1950s as high NOAA and NASA and faster than the (much maligned) UK Hadley/CRU data.

If there is any news here it is that Watts has been demonstrated once and for all to be an “anti-scientist” — not just someone who routinely smears scientists, but someone who represents the negation of the scientific method. No facts can change his conclusions. He is a science rejectionist — and an uber-hypocritical one, as we’ll see.

Watts had famously promised “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.“ He and other deniers even starting working with BEST to influence the outcome, as I first reported here: “Bombshell: Climate Science deniers claim to have full access to Berkeley temperature study work-product — and are now working with the Berkeley team!”

But BEST just released a whole paper devoted to debunking Watts’ life work – his effort to smear climate scientists by accusing them of knowingly using bad temperature stations to rig their results. NOAA had debunked Watts 2 years ago (see here), of course. But now it’s friendly fire trained on Watts. […]

Hot Dog Bites Skeptical Man: Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Does “Confirm the Reality of Global Warming”

Skeptic Talking Point Melts Away as an Inconvenient Physicist Confirms Warming

By ANDREW REVKIN
20 October 2011

Anthony Watts and others who have energized climate skeptics by claiming to poke holes in research showing substantial recent warming have their work cut out for them.

Richard Muller, a noted Berkeley physicist who’s been a strident critic of climate campaigners, has released a much-anticipated new package of studies, along with all of his team’s data and methods, that powerfully challenges one of the prime talking points of pundits and politicians trying to avoid a shift away from fossil fuels.

The assertion has been that the world hasn’t really warmed — just the thermometers — due to expanding asphalt and concrete around cities and other locations housing weather stations.

You can find Muller’s materials at Berkeleyearth.org. [4:52 p.m. | Update | Anthony Watts has posted a long piece stressing the important point that the Muller work has not yet been peer reviewed. (A Dot Earth reader below notes some irony in this complaint.)] […]

Skeptic Talking Point Melts Away as an Inconvenient Physicist Confirms Warming

Breaking News: The Earth Still Goes Around the Sun, and It's Still Warming Up

By Peter Gleick
20 October 2011

Oh, we already knew that.

That’s what crossed my mind today when I read the news release and then the actual scientific papers and then the Wall Street Journal opinion piece about the new conclusions of the study of the Earth’s surface temperature records from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) group.

The scientific community has known — and been saying for decades — that the earth is warming up. Except for a small cadre of highly vocal, ideologically stuck, but increasing marginalized people, there is no dispute about this among scientists. The data are extensive – covering the globe – and they have been vetted, reanalyzed, corrected for error, compared with satellite data, and subjected to every known criticism. And independent group after independent group has found the same thing: the earth is warming. The fact that this is actually old news can be seen in the latest poll (from Stanford University with Ipsos and Reuters) that, despite the inability of all the leading Republican presidential candidates to publicly acknowledge this, even 83% of the American people believe the earth is warming. And there probably isn’t much that 83% of the American people will agree on these days.

Indeed, even most remaining climate change skeptics and deniers have moved away from saying there is no warming. Now, their major talking points are that it isn’t caused by humans, or only a little bit, or it won’t be bad, or we can’t afford to fix it, or… Denial is a moving target.

Nevertheless, among a small group of skeptics there has been a lot of noise denying warming, ostensibly on the grounds that there are problems with the temperature measurements, thermometers, long-term records, methods of analysis, and more. The leading proponent of this view is Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who runs a popular blog site for climate skeptics. Watts has argued for a long time that our temperature records or analyses stink and that we cannot, therefore, believe the scientists who have shown over and over that it is warming. It has always been hard to take Watts seriously, given the massive amounts of evidence for warming, even beyond the clear temperature records themselves: the disappearing glaciers, the disappearing Arctic ice, the changes in migratory patterns for birds, the faster blooming of plants, the more extreme heat waves, the high ratio of record high temperatures to record low temperatures, the movement of plant and pest species toward the poles, the disappearing permafrost, the rising sea levels… I could go on and on. None of this convinces the diehards, though. […]

Breaking News: The Earth Still Goes Around the Sun, and It's Still Warming Up

More People Who Can’t Handle The Truth

By Paul Krugman
21 October 2011

If you follow this blog regularly, you’ll know that whenever I present data — and I do present a lot of data — right-wingers will complain of “cherry-picking”. They never have a clear example of how I should do things differently — or if they do, it’s always obviously wrong. But what they really mean is that they won’t accept data that doesn’t tell them what they want to hear.

This stuff is a minor version of what goes on, on a far bigger and more important scale, with regard to climate change. No matter how much evidence scientists accumulate, they’re accused of somehow manipulating the data.

Now, as Andy Revkin and Joe Romm tell us, one prominent skeptic who actually believed that the data was being manipulated has reported in detail on his efforts to produce clean climate data. And guess what: his data overwhelmingly confirm what climate scientists have been saying.

Richard Muller, the skeptic we’re talking about, seems to have had different motivations from many of the professional climate skeptics. He basically appears to have suffered from nothing more than characteristic physicist arrogance, the belief that people in lesser sciences just don’t know what they’re doing. (Economists experience this all the time, but we make up for it by being equally condescending to sociologists.) To his credit, he went and tried to do better — and is now being honest in revealing that what he got was pretty much the same as the results of previous research.

Of course, you know how the professional skeptics have responded; Joe Romm has the ugly but predictable details.

Oh, one more thing, relevant to both this story and today’s column: landing in my inbox this morning was

POLITICO Playbook, presented by the American Petroleum Institute

Uh huh.

More People Who Can’t Handle The Truth

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

World’s smallest electric motor made from a single molecule

2011-09-08T10:23:00.001-07:00

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2011) — The smallest electrical motor on the planet, at least according to Guinness World Records, is 200 nanometers. Granted, that's a pretty small motor -- after all, a single strand of human hair is 60,000 nanometers wide -- but that tiny mark is about to be shattered in a big way.

Chemists at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences have developed the world's first single molecule electric motor, a development that may potentially create a new class of devices that could be used in applications ranging from medicine to engineering.

In research published online Sept. 4 in Nature Nanotechnology, the Tufts team reports an electric motor that measures a mere 1 nanometer across, groundbreaking work considering that the current world record is a 200 nanometer motor. A single strand of human hair is about 60,000 nanometers wide.

According to E. Charles H. Sykes, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry at Tufts and senior author on the paper, the team plans to submit the Tufts-built electric motor to Guinness World Records.

"There has been significant progress in the construction of molecular motors powered by light and by chemical reactions, but this is the first time that electrically-driven molecular motors have been demonstrated, despite a few theoretical proposals," says Sykes. "We have been able to show that you can provide electricity to a single molecule and get it to do something that is not just random."

Sykes and his colleagues were able to control a molecular motor with electricity by using a state of the art, low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (LT-STM), one of about only 100 in the United States. The LT-STM uses electrons instead of light to "see" molecules.

The team used the metal tip on the microscope to provide an electrical charge to a butyl methyl sulfide molecule that had been placed on a conductive copper surface. This sulfur-containing molecule had carbon and hydrogen atoms radiating off to form what looked like two arms, with four carbons on one side and one on the other. These carbon chains were free to rotate around the sulfur-copper bond.

The team determined that by controlling the temperature of the molecule they could directly impact the rotation of the molecule. Temperatures around 5 Kelvin (K), or about minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit (ºF), proved to be the ideal to track the motor's motion. At this temperature, the Tufts researchers were able to track all of the rotations of the motor and analyze the data. […]

World's Smallest Electric Motor Made from a Single Molecule

Technorati Tags: nanotechnology

OK, climate sceptics: here's the raw data you wanted

2011-07-31T09:13:00.001-07:00

I predict that not a single peer-reviewed scientific paper will come out of this from the deniers’ side. This will used by them as further evidence of the climate-scientist/Al-Gore/World-Socialist conspiracy.

By Andy Coghlan
28 July 2011

Anyone can now view for themselves the raw data that was at the centre of last year's "climategate" scandal.

Temperature records going back 150 years from 5113 weather stations around the world were yesterday released to the public by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. The only records missing are from 19 stations in Poland, which refused to allow them to be made public.

"We released [the dataset] to dispel the myths that the data have been inappropriately manipulated, and that we are being secretive," says Trevor Davies, the university's pro-vice-chancellor for research. "Some sceptics argue we must have something to hide, and we've released the data to pull the rug out from those who say there isn't evidence that the global temperature is increasing."

The university were ordered to release data by the UK Information Commissioner's Office, following a freedom-of-information request for the raw data from researchers Jonathan Jones of the University of Oxford and Don Keiller of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK.

Davies says that the university initially refused on the grounds that the data is not owned by the CRU but by the national meteorological organisations that collect the data and share it with the CRU.

When the CRU's refusal was overruled by the information commissioner, the UK Met Office was recruited to act as a go-between and obtain permission to release all the data.

Poland refused, and the information commissioner overruled Trinidad and Tobago's wish for the data it supplied on latitudes between 30 degrees north and 40 degrees south to be withheld, as it had been specifically requested by Jones and Keiller in their FOI request and previously shared with other academics. […]

Other mainstream researchers and defenders of the consensus are not so confident that the release will silence the sceptics. "One can hope this might put an end to the interminable discussion of the CRU temperatures, but the experience of GISTEMP – another database that's been available for years – is that the criticisms will continue because there are some people who are never going to be satisfied," says Gavin Schmidt of Columbia University in New York.

"Sadly, I think this will just lead to a new round of attacks on CRU and the Met Office," says Bob Ward, communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. "Sceptics will pore through the data looking for ways to criticise the processing methodology in an attempt to persuade the public that there's doubt the world has warmed significantly." […]

OK, climate sceptics: here's the raw data you wanted

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

Naomi Oreskes: Fierce defender of climate change science – and scientists

2011-07-20T15:31:00.001-07:00

By Randy Dotinga
18 July 2011

San Diego – Postcard after postcard came addressed to Naomi Oreskes after she wrote her first book on how scientists study the movement of continents.

A groundswell of attention, perhaps? Not exactly. Her mother wrote them all, dashing off each postcard after finishing a chapter. Outside the worlds of science and academia, the book didn't attract much attention.

But 12 years later, the Manhattan-raised historian is traveling a much more public path, drawing both praise and condemnation. She's a fierce defender of scientists and a leader in the vanguard of those who strongly advocate that the world must acknowledge and deal with global warming.

"Professor Oreskes has turned vilified scientists into the heroes they deserve to be," says John Abraham, an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. She's performing a service regarding global warming by showing "how a few organized and influential people were able to confuse the country long after the science was settled," he says.

Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, acknowledges that she's trying to save the world. Earlier, though, her goal was simpler. She wanted to understand scientists by studying their past, in terms of both their findings and their funding.

"What difference does it make who pays for scientific research?" she says. "I'm interested in how scientists decide they have enough evidence to say they know something, and what difference it makes who pays for the work. We want science to be objective and neutral, but someone has to pay for it, and there's that old cliché about whoever pays the piper chooses the tune."

After writing about continental drift and plate tectonics, Oreskes began focusing on the efforts of oceanographers.

They were working to better understand the relation between the ocean and the atmosphere. In the process, they uncovered signs of global warming.

"I thought, 'Wow, this is unbelievable, there's this whole history that no one talks about,' " she says. "People have no idea how old the science [of global warming] is."

In 2004, Oreskes wrote a brief paper in the influential journal Science debunking claims that scientists disagreed about global warming. Instantly, she found herself at the center of an emotional dispute. News media cited her work, as did the Al Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Then, as now, Oreskes offers a simple message backed by extensive documentation: There is no scientific debate over climate change. None, zero, zip.

"The science is stable, the science is real, and there's no reason to doubt climate change," she says. […]

Naomi Oreskes: fierce defender of climate change science – and scientists

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

No stranger to spaceships, New Mexico builds a spaceport

2011-07-17T08:49:00.001-07:00

By Audie Cornish
17 July 2011

NASA's shuttle program ends when Atlantis comes back to Earth this week. It's not the end of American space exploration, however; it's the beginning of a new phase in commercial space travel.

For now, American astronauts will be hitching rides to the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz capsules. NASA and President Obama hope that won't be for long; they're counting on America's private sector to come up with a new way to get people, equipment and supplies into space.

That means there's a lot of money to be made in shuttling back and forth to the space station, and several companies are competing in a new race to space. Defense contractors like Boeing are in the game, as is Virgin Galactic — the private space tourism company owned by British business tycoon Richard Branson.

Whatever the new space vehicle is, it'll need a place to park. Enter Spaceport America, a company building a kind of airport for spaceships.

According to the people behind Spaceport America, the future of commercial space travel begins near the tiny New Mexican town of Truth or Consequences, where America's first commercial spaceport is under construction. Just outside of town, highway signs bear little yellow stickers in the shape of a rocket.

"It's kind of a mystery. We don't know who's putting those there," says David Wilson, spokesman for the state of New Mexico's Spaceport Authority. Really, he insists, it's not the spaceport.

On a 45-minute drive deep into the desert, miles of spiky grasses outline the horizon — interrupted by the occasional bison. The sky above is powder blue and clear of clouds. For decades, it's been the perfect place for pioneering rocket scientists.

"Robert Goddard brought his experiments and rockets to the New Mexican desert in the 30's for the same reasons," Wilson says. "There's this incredible weather window; there's no population out here, and then you're a mile up from sea level. We have a saying around there, 'The first mile of space is free.' It takes less energy to get to space from a place out here like this." […]

No Stranger To Spaceships, N.M. Builds A Spaceport

Technorati Tags: space exploration,space flight

Germany dumps nuclear power for renewable

2011-06-30T13:14:00.001-07:00

By GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press
30 June 2011

BERLIN — German lawmakers overwhelmingly approved on Thursday plans to shut the country's nuclear plants by 2022, putting Europe's biggest economy on the road to an ambitious build-up of renewable energy.

The lower house of parliament voted 513-79 for the shutdown plan drawn up by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after Japan's post-earthquake nuclear disaster. Most of the opposition voted in favor; eight lawmakers abstained.

Lawmakers sealed for good the shutdown of eight of the older reactors, which have been off the grid since March. Germany's remaining nine reactors will be shut down in stages by the end of 2022.

By 2020, Germany wants to double the share of energy stemming from water, wind, sun or biogas to at least 35 percent. Until this year, nuclear energy accounted for a bit less than a quarter of Germany's power supply.

"Some people abroad ask: will Germany manage this? Can it be done? It is the first time that a major industrial country has declared itself ready to carry through this technological and economic revolution," Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen told lawmakers.

"The message from today is this: the Germans are getting to work," he said. "This will be good for our country, because we all stand together. So let's get to work." […]

Germany dumps nuclear power for renewable

Technorati Tags: Germany,nuclear power,renewable energy

U.S. nuclear industry was in serious trouble before Fukushima and now is stalled

2011-06-27T10:59:00.001-07:00

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 17, 2011 – Even as Germany, Japan, Switzerland and other nations move to abandon existing and planned nuclear reactors, the United States is on a path to see at best only a small handful of already planned, government-backed reactor projects proceed, a group of experts have said.

While reversals for the nuclear power industry overseas have attracted substantial media attention, relatively little focus has been paid to such developments in the U.S. as the mothballing of the South Texas Project in Texas (once a prime candidate for a federal loan guarantee), the Calvert Cliffs-3 reactor expansion in Maryland (another federal loan guarantee candidate despite major complications presented by foreign ownership issues), and the decision this week by the French industry leader Areva to halt production at a Virginia reactor component plant - a direct result of the turndown in the industry's prospects.

The industry's situation is now such that even the controversial Obama Administration proposal for $36 billion in Treasury-backed loan guarantees for new reactors likely would be a case of throwing good money after bad, according to the experts.

Peter Bradford, former member of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, former chair of the New York and Maine utility regulatory commissions, and currently adjunct professor at Vermont Law School on "Nuclear Power and Public Policy," said: "Even before Fukushima events over the last two years had amply demonstrated that new nuclear power was a bad investment in the U.S. Cost estimates had continued to rise while those of alternatives fell. Wall Street rating agencies were uniformly skeptical.

Constellation pulled out of Calvert Cliffs last October. Exelon did the same for its proposed Texas reactors, and did so in the context of a review of its low carbon options that showed new nuclear to be far more expensive than most of its other choices .

Bradford added: "Since Fukushima, NRG has pulled the plug on South Texas and the County of Fresno in California has reconsidered its support for new nuclear units there. If the past is any guide, there will soon appear stories about how the U.S. nuclear renaissance was well underway before being stalled by the one-of-a-kind nuclear accident at Fukushima.

Just as we are often wrongly told that the first nuclear construction wave in the U.S. ended because of the accident at Three Mile Island, industry spokespeople will use Fukushima to obscure the fact that new nuclear has been priced out of the market in the U.S. for many years.

Under these circumstances, adding additional exposure to American taxpayers in the form of nuclear loan guarantees can't be justified."

Paul Fremont, managing director of equity research, Jefferies and Company, Inc., said: "The estimated cost of building a new nuclear plant varies widely from $4,500 per KW estimated by NRG for its cancelled project in Texas to $6,350 per KW estimated by Southern Company for its project in Georgia.

Today, nuclear represents the highest cost option to construct compared to traditional technologies including coal at an estimated cost of $2,000-$3,000 per KW and gas combined cycle units at $950 per KW. According to Jefferies analysis, the best economic alternative for new build today is gas based on forward prices ranging from $4.40 expected in 2011 to $6.00 in 2015."

Fremont added: "In March 2010, Jefferies published a report on nuclear new build titled 'Sympathy for the Devil' arguing that absent U.S. government subsidies, gas prices would need to be $8.50 per MCF or higher to earn reasonable (10 percent) returns on new nuclear investment. […]

US Nuclear Industry Was In Serious Trouble Before Fukushima and Now Is Stalled

Technorati Tags: Fukushima,nuclear power

Do Climate Skeptics Change Their Minds? Yes. But not often.

2011-06-17T10:30:00.001-07:00

By Brian Merchant
12 May 2011

Until a few months ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more classic climate skeptic than D.R. Tucker. A conservative author and radio talk show host, he didn't buy the notion that greenhouse-gas emissions were causing temperatures to rise. He was pretty sure global warming was a hoax perpetrated by Al Gore and a cadre of liberal, grant-hungry scientists. Then Tucker did what partisan pundits and climate skeptics rarely do: He changed his mind.

"I was defeated by facts," Tucker announced on FrumForum, the popular conservative blog. In an April 18 post, "Confessions of a Climate Convert," Tucker told readers how he came to question the ideologies of the climate debate, examine the science, and conclude that global warming was, in fact, very real. Tucker's post sent a giddy ripple through green circles and stoked the ire of his libertarian colleagues.

This sort of thing doesn't happen often. Or at least, it doesn't seem to. Only 48 percent of Americans believe that global warming is at least in part "a result of human activities," according to a 2010 Gallup poll, down from 60 percent in 2007 and 2008.

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, attributes this decline to five factors: The economic collapse, a severe decrease in media coverage, weather events like "Snowmaggedon," the efforts of the "denial industry" (the network of industry-funded think tanks and political advocacy groups that push skeptic views), and the "ClimateGate" debacle.

This shift toward climate-change skepticism makes Tucker's "conversion" all the more remarkable. So how did it happen?

Leiserowitz has been documenting trends in American climate belief for the past decade. He divides American attitudes toward climate change into six categories: "alarmed," "concerned," "cautious," "disengaged," "doubtful," and "dismissive." …

Tucker was a naysayer. "I bought into Rush Limbaugh's view that the environmentalist movement was 'the new refuge of socialist thinking,' " he tells me. Tucker figured Al Gore and Van Jones (Obama's onetime green jobs adviser) were leading liberals in a plot that used the specter of climate change to snare more power. Leiserowitz would call this "dismissive" thinking.

Tucker's conversion began when he read Morris Fiorina's Disconnect, which outlines the way partisan divisions take shape between Democrats and Republicans, and points out that environmentalism used to be one of conservatives' chief concerns. Tucker's curiosity was piqued.

"Why was it that environmentalism was only associated with the Democratic party now? And it was from those political questions that I became open to the scientific questions," Tucker says. "It went from politics to the science." …

Do Climate Skeptics Change Their Minds? via Ketsugami

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

Former Rep. Inglis to launch conservative coalition to address global warming

2011-06-17T09:11:00.001-07:00

By Jean Chemnick, E&E reporter
14 June 2011

A former Republican congressman who is an advocate for action to address climate change plans to launch a new conservative coalition this fall made up of Republicans who, like him, believe that human emissions are triggering global warming and that steps should be taken to stop it.

Former six-term Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) said he hopes his coalition will become a factor in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections -- and beyond. He said the view embraced by many Republicans that human emissions are not a major contributor to global warming is out of step with what it means to be a conservative, given that most scientists say the reverse is true.

Conservatives typically are people who try to be cognizant of risk and move to minimize risk. To be told of risk and to consciously decide to disregard it seems to be the opposite of conservative," Inglis said in a telephone interview.

He said his coalition would seek to change that, even if the message takes a while to stick.

"What I hope to do is be a part of an effort that calls conservatives to return to conservatism and to turn away from the populist rejection of science," Inglis said. He conceded that he expects this message to take at least two election cycles to take root, given today's political climate. ...

Former Rep. Inglis to launch conservative coalition to address global warming

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

U.S. Navy backs fusion reactor project

2011-05-24T15:05:00.001-07:00

By Alan Boyle
10 May 2011

A Navy-funded effort to harness nuclear fusion power reports that its unconventional plasma device is operating as designed and generating "positive results" more than halfway through the project.

The latest quarterly update from EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. comes amid other signs that seemingly oddball approaches to fusion research may not be all that oddball after all. Just last week, General Fusion announced that Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, was part of a $19.5 million investment round to further the company's plan to take advantage of a technology called magnetized target fusion. Another billionaire, Paul Allen, is an investor in Tri Alpha Energy, which is working on its own hush-hush fusion project (and occasionally publishing its research).

EMC2 Fusion doesn't have tens of millions of venture capital to play with — but it does have a $7.9 million Navy contract to test a plasma technology known as inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, also known as Polywell fusion. The idea is to accelerate positively charged ions in an electrical cage to such an extent that they occasionally spark a fusion reaction, releasing energy and neutrons. The concept was pioneered by the late physicist Robert Bussard, and carried forward by the EMC2 Fusion team in Santa Fe, N.M.

Some of the leading team members went on leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory to work on EMC2. Rick Nebel, the Los Alamos engineer who led the company since Bussard's death in 2007, retired from the company last November. Taking his place as acting chief executive officer is Jaeyoung Park. The 41-year-old physicist says he's given up his position at Los Alamos to focus fully on EMC2.

"We had a lot of milestones to meet in the last six months or so," Park told me today. "It's been pretty hectic." …

Fusion goes forward from the fringe

Technorati Tags: fusion

Japan ‘plans solar panels for all new buildings'

2011-05-22T10:59:00.001-07:00

TOKYO,’May 22 (AFP) — Japan is considering a plan that would make it compulsory for all new buildings and houses to come fitted with solar panels by 2030, a business daily said Sunday.

The plan, expected to be unveiled at the upcoming G8 Summit in France, aims to show Japan's resolve to encourage technological innovation and promote the wider use of renewable energy, the Nikkei daily said.

Japan has reeled from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear crisis they triggered as it battles to stabilise the crippled Fukushima Daiichi atomic power plant.

On Thursday, the first day of the two-day summit in Deauville, France, Prime Minister Naoto Kan is expected to announce Japan's intention to continue operating nuclear plants after confirming their safety, the Nikkei said without citing sources.

But he is also expected to unveil a plan to step up efforts to push renewable energy and energy conservation.

Kan believes that the installation of solar panels would help Japan realise such goals, the Nikkei said.

He hopes that technological innovation will drastically bring down costs of solar power generation and thereby make the use of renewable energy more widespread, it said.

Japan 'plans solar panels for all new buildings'

Technorati Tags: Japan,solar power,alternative energy,nuclear power

Ridgeblade home wind turbine

2011-05-20T10:29:00.001-07:00

This design looks dead brilliant. From the company site:

The ridgeblade is a cross flow turbine fitted on the ridge line at the top of a building and uses the existing roof area to collect and focus the wind. This is where the wind is forced to travel over the roof surface, accelerating the airflow though the turbine. And whilst the unit is fixed to the roof and doesn’t turn to face the wind, the advanced blade design means that it works in 70% of wind directions.

The ridgeblade is an innovative, affordable and effective way of harnessing the wind's power to produce renewable electricity.

The ridgeblade addresses the issues associated with traditional micro-wind generation technologies.

The unique design means it can reliably produce electricity in low or variable wind conditions whilst creating very little visual impact.

ridgeblade

Technorati Tags: wind turbine,wind power,alternative energy

Renewable energy can power the world, says landmark IPCC study

2011-05-17T09:57:00.001-07:00

UN's climate change science body says renewables supply, particularly solar power, can meet global demand

By Fiona Harvey, www.guardian.co.uk
9 May 2011

Renewable energy could account for almost 80% of the world's energy supply within four decades - but only if governments pursue the policies needed to promote green power, according to a landmark report published on Monday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world's leading climate scientists convened by the United Nations, said that if the full range of renewable technologies were deployed, the world could keep greenhouse gas concentrations to less than 450 parts per million, the level scientists have predicted will be the limit of safety beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.

Investing in renewables to the extent needed would cost only about 1% of global GDP annually, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC.

Renewable energy is already growing fast – of the 300 gigawatts of new electricity generation capacity added globally between 2008 and 2009, about 140GW came from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, according to the report.

The investment that will be needed to meet the greenhouse gas emissions targets demanded by scientists is likely to amount to about $5trn in the next decade, rising to $7trn from 2021 to 2030. …

Renewable energy can power the world, says landmark IPCC study

Technorati Tags: renewable energy,solar power,wind power,IPCC

Prominent climate denialist paper retracted due to plagiarism

2011-05-16T08:43:00.001-07:00

By DeepClimate
15 May 2011

It’s been a long time coming, but there has now been an official finding in at least one of the complaints concerning the dubious scholarship of GMU professors Edward Wegman and Yasmin Said. According to Dan Vergano of USA Today, the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis (CSDA) has officially confirmed that Said, Wegman et al 2008, a follow up to the infamous Wegman et al report to Congress, will finally be retracted following complaints of plagiarism and inadequate peer review.

The CSDA paper, Social Networks of Author–Coauthor Relationships, was a follow up to the 2006 report to congress by Wegman, Said and Rice University professor David Scott. Both the Wegman report and Said et al claimed that the “entrepreunerial” style of co-authorship in paleoclimatology demonstrated lax peer review in the field, while the “mentor” style of an established professor collaborating with former students would be less problematic. All three of Wegman’s 2008 co-authors – Said, Walid Sharabati and John Rigsby – were former or current students

I first discovered apparent plagiarism in the Wegman report in December 2009. I later documented massive cut-and-paste in the social network analysis background sections of both the report and the CSDA paper in April 2010. At the time, I pointed out that both Wegman and Said had acknowledged federal funding from research offices associated with the Department of Defence and the National Institute of Health.

And I also noted that the paper had sailed through from submission to acceptance in a mere six days, suggesting that it had not been properly peer reviewed at all. That astonishing fact and the deeply flawed analysis belied the paper’s central premise; indeed, as John Mashey has noted, this is a prime example of self-refuting paper. …

Retraction of Said, Wegman et al 2008, part 1

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
15 May 2011

Evidence of plagiarism and complaints about the peer-review process have led a statistics journal to retract a federally funded study that condemned scientific support for global warming.

The study, which appeared in 2008 in the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, was headed by statistician Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Its analysis was an outgrowth of a controversial congressional report that Wegman headed in 2006. The "Wegman Report" suggested climate scientists colluded in their studies and questioned whether global warming was real. The report has since become a touchstone among climate change naysayers.

The journal publisher's legal team "has decided to retract the study," said CSDA journal editor Stanley Azen of the University of Southern California, following complaints of plagiarism. A November review by three plagiarism experts of the 2006 congressional report for USA TODAY also concluded that portions contained text from Wikipedia and textbooks. The journal study, co-authored by Wegman student Yasmin Said, detailed part of the congressional report's analysis. …

The congressional report, requested by global warming skeptic Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and the study concluded that climate scientists favorably publish one another's work because of too-close collaboration. They suggested this led to the consensus that the Earth is warming. …

Computer scientist Ted Kirkpatrick of Canada's Simon Fraser University, filed a complaint with the journal after reading the climate science website Deep Climate, which first noted plagiarism in the Wegman Report in 2009. "There is something beyond ironic about a study of the conduct of science having ethics problems," Kirkpatrick says. …

Climate study gets pulled after charges of plagiarism

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,corruption

Earth Hour on Saturday, 26 March 2011

2011-03-25T06:58:00.001-07:00

By Matilda Battersby
25 March 2011

Lights will switch off around the globe tomorrow for the fifth annual Earth Hour.

New York’s Empire State Building, Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace, Paris’ Eiffel Tower, Hong Kong’s Government House, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil and other global landmarks will go dark at 8.30pm local time on Saturday 26 March.

131 countries are participating and organisers are estimating that hundreds of millions of people will come together to switch off power in support of saving the planet from climate change.

“It is only through the collective action of business, organisations, individuals, communities and governments that we will be able to affect change on the scale required to address the environmental challenges we face,” said Andy Ridley, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Earth Hour.

“We are calling on businesses and organisations to use the annual lights-out event as the time to show their commitment to lasting action for the planet, beyond the hour.”

This year is the first time organisers are calling on participants to go “beyond the hour” and they have set up a dedicated website in 11 languages to allow businesses, governments and individuals to collaborate on worldwide projects.

“We have developed this platform for people, organisations and companies around the world to show what can be done, by showcasing and sharing their actions throughout the year,” Ridley said. …

The hour the world goes dark

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

New technologies usher in the millimeter-scale computing era

2011-03-16T16:36:00.001-07:00

Contact: Nicole Casal Moore, ncmoore@umich.edu, University of Michigan
22-Feb-2011

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A prototype implantable eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients is believed to contain the first complete millimeter-scale computing system.

And a compact radio that needs no tuning to find the right frequency could be a key enabler to organizing millimeter-scale systems into wireless sensor networks. These networks could one day track pollution, monitor structural integrity, perform surveillance, or make virtually any object smart and trackable.

Both developments at the University of Michigan are significant milestones in the march toward millimeter-scale computing, believed to be the next electronics frontier.

Researchers present papers on each today at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. The work is being led by three faculty members in the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: professors Dennis Sylvester and David Blaauw, and assistant professor David Wentzloff.

Nearly invisible millimeter-scale systems could enable ubiquitous computing, and the researchers say that's the future of the industry. They point to Bell's Law, a corollary to Moore's Law. (Moore's says that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, roughly doubling processing power.)

Bell's Law says there's a new class of smaller, cheaper computers about every decade. With each new class, the volume shrinks by two orders of magnitude and the number of systems per person increases. The law has held from 1960s' mainframes through the '80s' personal computers, the '90s' notebooks and the new millennium's smart phones.

"When you get smaller than hand-held devices, you turn to these monitoring devices," Blaauw said. "The next big challenge is to achieve millimeter-scale systems, which have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment and our buildings. Because they're so small, you could manufacture hundreds of thousands on one wafer. There could be 10s to 100s of them per person and it's this per capita increase that fuels the semiconductor industry's growth."

Blaauw and Sylvester's new system is targeted toward medical applications. The work they present at ISSCC focuses on a pressure monitor designed to be implanted in the eye to conveniently and continuously track the progress of glaucoma, a potentially blinding disease. (The device is expected to be commercially available several years from now.)

In a package that's just over 1 cubic millimeter, the system fits an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin-film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device that would be held near the eye.

"This is the first true millimeter-scale complete computing system," Sylvester said.

"Our work is unique in the sense that we're thinking about complete systems in which all the components are low-power and fit on the chip. We can collect data, store it and transmit it. The applications for systems of this size are endless."

The processor in the eye pressure monitor is the third generation of the researchers' Phoenix chip, which uses a unique power gating architecture and an extreme sleep mode to achieve ultra-low power consumption. The newest system wakes every 15 minutes to take measurements and consumes an average of 5.3 nanowatts. To keep the battery charged, it requires exposure to 10 hours of indoor light each day or 1.5 hours of sunlight. It can store up to a week's worth of information. …

Toward computers that fit on a pen tip: New technologies usher in the millimeter-scale computing era

Technorati Tags: nanotechnology,ubiquitous computing

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher stands tall despite guilty verdict

2011-03-06T08:38:00.001-08:00

By Laurel Whitney
4 March 11

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience

A collective gasp was heard late afternoon yesterday as Tim DeChristopher was found guilty after only 5 hours of jury deliberation. Officially charged with one count of False Statement and one count of violating the Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act, suddenly everyone was left thinking- did they convict the real criminal?

Much of the last two days of trial had focused on DeChristopher's intent when bidding for BLM land leases. Prosecutor John Hubert argued that DeChristopher intentionally "disrupted, derailed, and sabotaged" the auction. However, defense attorney Ron Yengich painted a different picture:

"He wanted to raise a red flag," he said. "He wanted to make a statement. That’s what he wanted to do. His desire was not to thwart the auction. ... He wanted people to think about the consequences that the auction was bringing to bear on other people. But it was never his intention to harm anyone."

Maybe if Tim had run into the auction using his paddle to feverishly whack participants to prevent them from bidding, then that could be seen harmful.

But let’s put this into context:

Did Tim cause the deaths of 29 people in a mining accident fueled by poor practices and improper equipment maintenance?

Did Tim cause the deaths of 11 people when an offshore oil rig exploded because of numerous safety violations and regulatory oversights causing millions of barrels of oil to spew into the Gulf for months and effectively decimate local economies and ecosystems?

Or how about the other oil spill last summer that leaked over 800,000 gallons into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, that remains contaminated over 6 months later?

Did he contaminate acres of Amazon rainforest and years later refuse to clean it up and pay the fines?

Or did he cause a toxic gas leak at a pesticide plant that not only killed 20,000 people but continues to contaminate the water and cripplingly sicken citizens over 25 years after the original event?
No, in fact Tim only picked up a paddle. And now he’s the one facing prison. The worst any of the above companies suffered was a blow to their images. …

Tim DeChristopher stands tall despite guilty verdict

Technorati Tags: activism,climate change,global warming

Age of sail boats inspires green solutions for ocean cargo

2011-02-07T12:55:00.001-08:00

By George Webster for CNN
December 27, 2010 2:14 a.m. EST

London (CNN) -- With its long hull, towering masts and expansive sails, it resembles a schooner from the 19th century. But fitted with a series of high-tech features, this so-called "sail ship" is designed to cut carbon emissions on the high seas today.

Part of a fleet of carbon-neutral, wind-powered sail ships planned by Britain's B9 Energy, it's just one example of how companies are looking to the past for greener alternatives to the gas-guzzling vessels that transport the world's cargo.

When it comes to wind power replacing fuel in shipping vessels, "it's not a question of if, but when," according to David Surplus, the chairman of B9 Energy, Britain's largest windfarm operator.

"By most people's estimates, we have reached peak oil -- sooner or later the fuel will run out and there will simply be no alternative," said Surplus.

Roughly 87% of international trade is carried out by the shipping industry, figures from the International Maritime Organization show.

With the majority of world trade traveling by sea, the shipping industry is responsible for around 4% of global carbon emissions, according to the latest figures available from the United Nations.

B9 claims its vessel will be the first commercially produced merchant ship to harness alternative energy, but it certainly isn't alone in using old-fashioned sail boats to move goods.

"At the moment it's happening on a fairly small, fairly local scale," said Jan Lundberg, founder of Sail Transport Network, a group that promotes sailing as a means of eco-friendly, cost-efficient trade.

But the trend is growing, he said, pointing to examples like El Lago Coffee Company, which uses traditional sail boats to ship Guatemalan coffee beans to the United States, and the Sail Transport Company, a Seattle-based group that uses sailboats to deliver "petroleum-free organic produce."

B9's new eco-friendly ships, planned to be in production by 2012, signify a return to a much more traditional form of merchant shipping. Before diesel-powered steel tankers came to dominate the seas, international trade was conducted on vast, wooden sail ships.

The 100% carbon-neutral freighter will feature automated, self-adjusting sails that respond to minute changes in the wind to maximize propulsion. The boat will also take advantage of "skysail" technology -- a kite-styled towing system currently used on some cargo ships to improve fuel efficiency. …

Age of sail boats inspires green solutions

Technorati Tags: wind power,transportation,Peak Oil

NASA finds Earth-size planet candidates in the habitable zone

2011-02-04T15:04:00.001-08:00

Is our Milky Way galaxy home to other planets the size of Earth? Are Earth-sized planets common or rare? NASA scientists seeking answers to those questions recently revealed their discovery.

"We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone - a region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Some candidates could even have moons with liquid water," said William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the Kepler Mission’s science principal investigator. "Five of the planetary candidates are both near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their parent stars."

Planet candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

"We have found over twelve hundred candidate planets - that’s more than all the people have found so far in history," said Borucki. "Now, these are candidates, but most of them, I’m convinced, will be confirmed as planets in the coming months and years."

The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter. The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009 of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler’s field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we’ve found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting stars like our sun in our galaxy," said Borucki. "Kepler can find only a small fraction of the planets around the stars it looks at because the orbits aren’t aligned properly. If you account for those two factors, our results indicate there must be millions of planets orbiting the stars that surround our sun."

“We’re about half-way through Kepler’s scheduled mission," said Roger Hunter, the Kepler project manager. "Today’s announcement is very exciting and portends many discoveries to come. It’s looking like the galaxy may be littered with many planets.”

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates, including one, Kepler-11, that scientists have been able to confirm that has no fewer than six planets.

"Another exciting discovery has been the tremendous variations in the structure of the confirmed planets – some have the density of Styrofoam and others are denser than iron. The Earth's density is in between."

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. …

NASA Finds Earth-size Planet Candidates in the Habitable Zone

Technorati Tags: space exploration

Extinction cascades can be prevented, scientists find

2011-01-26T19:42:00.001-08:00

EVANSTON, Illinois, January 25, 2011 (ENS) - Extinction cascades are often observed following the loss of a key species within an ecosystem. As the system changes to compensate for the loss, availability of food, territory and other resources to each of the remaining species can fluctuate wildly, creating a boom-or-bust environment that can lead to even more extinctions.

New research at Northwestern University has found that more than 70 percent of these extinctions are preventable, assuming that the ecosystem can be brought into balance and no new factors are introduced.

Northwestern University physics professor Adilson Motter and his student, Sagar Sahasrabudhe, have developed a mathematical model to describe interactions within ecological food webs that could rescue fragile ecosystems and halt complex cascade events.

Published in the January 25 issue of the journal Nature Communications, their study illustrates how human intervention may be effective in species conservation.

"Our study provides a theoretical basis for management efforts that would aim to mitigate extinction cascades in food web networks," Motter said.

The scientists found evidence that some extinctions are caused not by a primary disturbance but as the result of a cascade.

"We find that extinction cascades can often be mitigated by suppressing, rather than enhancing, the populations of specific species," he said.

Motter and his team conclude that large-scale failures can be avoided by focusing on preventing the waves of failure that follow the initial event. …

Extinction Cascades Can Be Prevented, Scientists Find

Technorati Tags: ecosystem,environmental restoration,endangered species,extinction

Waxman presses climate skeptic on industry funds

2011-01-26T09:14:00.001-08:00

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
January 25, 2011, 12:58 pm

In February 2009, Patrick Michaels, a former climatologist at the University of Virginia who is now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, appeared before a House subcommittee to testify on the issue of climate change.

He stated that current climate models “can no longer be relied upon” in predicting future warming and that drastic action to curb emissions was unwarranted — conclusions welcomed by Republicans already disinclined to support the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill, which was approved by the House that June.

Now Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat who served as chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce and co-sponsored the bill, is demanding answers on whether the scientist misled the committee on the sources of his financing.

Along with his written testimony for the 2009 hearing, Dr. Michaels submitted to Congress a document detailing roughly $4.2 million in funds he has received for his scientific work. Only 3 percent of the funding listed came from energy-sector sources.

After the hearing, Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont — citing reports that Dr. Michaels had received substantial funds from the coal, oil and gas industry — questioned him on the record about what he received from the energy sector, but he declined to amend his statements.

During an appearance on CNN last year, however, Dr. Michaels was pressed on the sources of his funding by Fareed Zakaria.

“Can I ask you what percentage of your work is funded by the petroleum industry?” Mr. Zakaria said.

“I don’t know — 40 percent? I don’t know,” Dr. Michaels responded.

The interview, which was recorded in August but appears to have only recently come to Mr. Waxman’s attention, elicited a sharp response from the former committee chairman. In a letter to his Republican successor as chairman, Fred Upton of Michigan, Mr. Waxman demanded an inquiry into whether Dr. Michaels deceived Congress about his financial background.

“It would be a serious matter if Dr. Michaels misled the committee about his financial backers and evaded Representative Welch’s attempt to seek clarification,” Mr. Waxman wrote.

“I hope you will agree that all witnesses need to provide accurate disclosures to the Committee and will work with me in resolving the issues raised by Dr. Michaels’s testimony,” he added.

Dr. Michaels did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

In an e-mail to Politico, a Republican committee aide wrote that under Mr. Upton’s leadership, the committee would “adhere to both the letter and the spirit of truth-in-testimony requirements and other committee rules and practices.”

Waxman Presses Climate Skeptic on Industry Funds

Technorati Tags: corruption,global warming,climate change

Incredible Sahara Forest Project moves from concept to reality with major development deal

2011-01-19T08:35:00.001-08:00

By Leonora Oppenheim, London, UK
01.18.11

There's great news for sustainable design innovation this week as the Sahara Forest Project gets backing from a development deal between Norway and Jordan. We wrote about this incredible proposal to create carbon neutral energy, fresh water, food and fuel crops through symbiotic technologies back in 2008. Now, after years of hard work and persistence from the collaborative Sahara Forest Project team, this large scale concept is going to become a big reality. Here is the new vision...

A quick recap of the Sahara Forest Project
The Sahara Forest Project proposes to use two separate technologies together, Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Seawater Greenhouses, to provide an array of sustainable energy and agricultural solutions, in the usually inhospitable desert environment, through the desalination of seawater into freshwater.

International Collaboration between Norway and Jordan
After joining forces with the Norwegian environmental group the Bellona Foundation in 2009 The Sahara Forest Project team, including biomimicry architect Michael Pawlyn, Seawater Greenhouse designer Charlie Paton and structural engineer Bill Watts, presented their proposal at COP15.

Having been well received in Copenhagen the fast rising profile of the project lead to an audience with Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan in Oslo in June 2010. The King was so impressed he invited the SFP team to visit Jordan in October 2010 to scope out a feasibility study. The result of these fast moving developments is the deal that was signed last week between Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority and The Sahara Forest Project in Amman, Jordan.

A Test and Demonstration Centre in Jordan
The Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) is the catchy name for the Jordanian Government's strategic development zone by the Red Sea. A perfect location for the Sahara Forest Project, which needs to be located very specifically near the coastline in order to pump seawater to the power plant. …

Incredible Sahara Forest Project Moves From Concept To Reality With Major Development Deal

WikiLeaks reveals international intrigue over science and environment

2011-01-12T17:27:00.001-08:00

By Brandon Keim Email Author
January 12, 2011

While most of the attention around WikiLeaks' diplomatic cable release involved high-profile geopolitical intrigue, some of the documents involved science and the environment.

Sea Shepherd Whale Deal

The latest of these, reported Jan. 6 by the Guardian newspaper, involve discussions in late 2009 and early 2010 between the United States and Japan over Sea Shepherd, an antiwhaling group that has fought Japan's ongoing hunts on the open seas.

Japan, admitting that Sea Shepherd had effectively limited its kills, asked the United States to investigate the group. The United States agreed and asked Japan to lower its quotas, and to help negotiate lower quotas with Iceland, another whale-killing nation.

The United States eventually asked the International Whaling Commission to pass laws to "guarantee security in the seas," a veiled reference to groups like Sea Shepherd. According to the Guardian, Great Britain and other European countries defeated the proposal. …

WikiLeaks Reveals International Intrigue Over Science and Environment

Technorati Tags: activism,Sea Shepherd

Trial of British climate protesters collapses as police provocateur revealed

2011-01-12T08:52:00.001-08:00

Associated Press
Monday, January 10, 2011 8:23 am

The tattooed environmentalist, known to fellow activists as "Flash" because of his supply of ready money, had a secret – he was an undercover policeman who had spent years infiltrating the movement.

At some point, Constable Mark Kennedy had second thoughts about his mission.

British prosecutors on Monday dropped charges against six environmental protesters after their lawyer said Kennedy had offered to help the accused.

Activists and politicians called for an investigation into the clandestine police operation, saying Kennedy had played a key role in organizing and encouraging the protest that led to the arrests.

The defendants' lawyer, Mike Schwarz, said the case raised "serious questions" about the role of the police.

"One expects there to be undercover police on serious operations to investigate serious crime," he said. "This was quite the opposite. This is civil disobedience which has a long history in this country and should be protected."

The defendants were picked up in a controversial sweep of 114 activists in 2009 and charged with plotting to shut down one of Britain's biggest power stations.

Their trial had been due to start Monday, but at the last minute, public prosecutors said new information had come to light that "significantly undermined the prosecution's case."

The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement that there was "no longer sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction." The charges were formally dropped at a court hearing in Nottingham, central England.

Schwarz said the trial collapsed after attorneys pressed for information about the role of Kennedy, who spent several years inside the protest group. Schwarz said Kennedy had been "willing to speak to me with a view to assisting the defense."

"It is no coincidence that, just 48 hours after we told (prosecutors) our clients could not receive a fair trial unless they disclosed material about Kennedy, they halted the prosecution," he said. …

Trial of British climate protesters collapses

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism,corruption

We can feed 9 billion people in 2050

2011-01-11T18:50:00.001-08:00

By Debora Mackenzie
17:16 11 January 2011

The 9 billion people projected to inhabit the Earth by 2050 need not starve in order to preserve the environment, says a major report on sustainability out this week.

Agrimonde describes the findings of a huge five-year modelling exercise by the French national agricultural and development research agencies, INRA and CIRAD. It is the second report on sustainability launched this week to provide a healthy dose of good news.

The French team began with a goal – 3000 calories per day for everyone, including 500 from animal sources – then ran a global food model repeatedly, with and without environmental limits on farming. The aim was to see how the calorie goal could be achieved.

"We found three main conditions," says Hervé Guyomard of INRA. "The biggest surprise was that some regions will depend even more on imports", even as their production rises. This, he says, means that we will need to find ways to counter excessive fluctuations in world prices so that imports are not hindered.

In addition, says Guyomard, "the rich must stop consuming so much". He points out that food amounting to 800 calories is lost per person each day as waste in richer nations.

The model suggested that realistic yield increases could feed everyone, even as farms take measures to protect the environment, such as preserving forests or cutting down on the use of fossil fuels. The key will be to tailor detailed solutions to different regions.

These are the main challenges for research, says Guyomard. For example, high-yield farming typically means large expanses of one crop, which encourages crop diseases and requires more pesticides.

Instead, researchers could find ways for farmers to raise yields while maintaining biodiversity. Guyomard says food scientists will need to organise globally, as climate scientists have done.

We can feed 9 billion people in 2050

Technorati Tags: agriculture

Are superconductors finally coming of age?

2011-01-10T18:13:00.001-08:00

By Stephen Lacey, Editor
January 6, 2011

Massachusetts -- Every technology must compete against an incumbent: Transistors fought vacuum tubes; optical fibers fought copper wires in communications; and today, superconductors are facing off against copper cables in the electricity transmission space.

Superconductor technologies have made significant advancements in the last decade; however, there are still some hurdles to get over before they are implemented en masse.

At very low temperatures – between -320 degrees F (-196 C) and -460 degrees F (-273 C) – certain metal and ceramic materials conduct electricity with virtually no resistance. Wires made of these superconducting materials can transmit 100-150 times more electricity than traditional copper wires without any losses in efficiency. (Wires that operate in the -320 degree F range are called “high-temperature” superconductors, or HTS).

Scientists have known about superconductivity since the early 1900's. But it's only in recent years that companies have produced wires and cables that are becoming cost-competitive with traditional technologies.

Greg Yurek, CEO of American Superconductor (AMSC), thinks that the time is right for HTS technologies to penetrate the market. Last year, the company received an order for 10 million feet (3 million meters) of wire from the South Korean company LS Cable. This is the first in a series of orders that could bring more than 30 miles of superconductor cable to South Korea. The company expects numerous orders to come from China in the coming years as well.

“I think it's a marker of the transition into the age of superconductors,” says Yurek.

On a wire to wire basis, superconductors can cost multiples more than copper. But on the system level – when factoring in capacity, lifetime, efficiency and maintenance – Yurek says that superconducting cables are cost-competitive with conventional cables. And because they're buried underground, HTS cables avoid problems associated with weather or visual impact. ...

Are Superconductors Finally Coming of Age?

Technorati Tags: power transmission

Dow Chemical pushing for sustainable Olympic Games

2011-01-06T08:04:00.001-08:00

The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW), chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced today that the Company has become an official Worldwide Olympic Partner as part of The Olympic Partners Program (TOP).

As the official “Chemistry Company” of the Olympic Movement, Dow will partner with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and National Olympic Committees around the world through 2020.

“With our long-standing commitment to global sustainability, innovation, scientific excellence and addressing world challenges, we believe Dow is perfectly matched to the vision of the Olympic Movement, which is about peace, progress and the world coming together to celebrate our common humanity,” said Liveris. “In addition, our association with the Olympics will present Dow with tremendous new business opportunities, making this partnership a powerful growth catalyst that comes at the right time in our Company's strategic transformation.”

IOC president Dr. Jacques Rogge joined Liveris at today's press conference to unveil the joint logo - joining Dow's red diamond with the Olympic rings - and to welcome Dow as the newest member of the TOP program.

“We are delighted to welcome Dow to the TOP Program,” said Dr. Rogge. “As a global leader in the chemical industry and an innovator in sustainability, Dow will provide much more than critical financial support to the Olympic Movement. They will also bring industry-leading expertise and innovation to the Games themselves. Dow will be an important partner in making our vision for sustainability and global cooperation a reality.” …

The Dow Chemical Company Becomes Worldwide Olympic Partner via Shades of Green

Technorati Tags: sustainable development

New solar fuel machine ‘mimics plant life’

2010-12-25T10:45:00.001-08:00

By Neil Bowdler, Science reporter, BBC News
23 December 2010 Last updated at 14:11 ET

A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun's energy into fuel.

The machine uses the Sun's rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported.

Conventional photovoltaic panels must use the electricity they generate in situ, and cannot deliver power at night.

Details are published in the journal Science.

The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria.

Ceria has a natural propensity to exhale oxygen as it heats up and inhale it as it cools down.

If as in the prototype, carbon dioxide and/or water are pumped into the vessel, the ceria will rapidly strip the oxygen from them as it cools, creating hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen produced could be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells in cars, for example, while a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used to create "syngas" for fuel. …

The prototype is grossly inefficient, the fuel created harnessing only between 0.7% and 0.8% of the solar energy taken into the vessel.

Most of the energy is lost through heat loss through the reactor's wall or through the re-radiation of sunlight back through the device's aperture.

But the researchers are confident that efficiency rates of up to 19% can be achieved through better insulation and smaller apertures. Such efficiency rates, they say, could make for a viable commercial device. …

New solar fuel machine 'mimics plant life'

Technorati Tags: solar power,alternative energy,hydrogen

Construction of the world’s largest neutrino observatory completed: Antarctica’s IceCube

2010-12-20T15:35:00.001-08:00

ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2010) — Culminating a decade of planning, innovation and testing, construction of the world's largest neutrino observatory, installed in the ice of the Antarctic plateau at the geographic South Pole, was successfully completed Dec. 18, 2010, New Zealand time.

The last of 86 holes had been drilled and a total of 5,160 optical sensors are now installed to form the main detector -- a cubic kilometer of instrumented ice -- of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

From its vantage point at the end of the world, IceCube provides an innovative means to investigate the properties of fundamental particles that originate in some of the most spectacular phenomena in the universe.

In the deep, dark, stillness of the Antarctic ice, IceCube records the rare collisions of neutrinos--elusive sub-atomic particles--with the atomic nuclei of the water molecules of the ice. Some neutrinos come from the sun, while others come from cosmic rays interacting with the Earth's atmosphere and dramatic astronomical sources such as exploding stars in the Milky Way and other distant galaxies. Trillions of neutrinos stream through the human body at any given moment, but they rarely interact with regular matter, and researchers want to know more about them and where they come from. …

Construction of the world's largest neutrino observatory completed: Antarctica's IceCube

Technorati Tags: Antarctica,space exploration

Science magazine’s breakthrough of the year: The first quantum machine

2010-12-19T14:08:00.001-08:00

Contact: Natasha Pinol, npinol@aaas.org
16-Dec-2010

(American Association for the Advancement of Science) Back in March, a group of researchers designed a gadget that moves in ways that can only be described by quantum mechanics -- the set of rules that governs the behavior of tiny things like molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. In recognition of the conceptual ground their experiment breaks, the ingenuity behind it and its many potential applications, Science has called this discovery the most significant scientific advance of 2010.

Physicists Andrew Cleland and John Martinis from the University of California at Santa Barbara and their colleagues designed the machine—a tiny metal paddle of semiconductor, visible to the naked eye—and coaxed it into dancing with a quantum groove. First, they cooled the paddle until it reached its "ground state," or the lowest energy state permitted by the laws of quantum mechanics (a goal long-sought by physicists). Then they raised the widget's energy by a single quantum to produce a purely quantum-mechanical state of motion. They even managed to put the gadget in both states at once, so that it literally vibrated a little and a lot at the same time—a bizarre phenomenon allowed by the weird rules of quantum mechanics.

Science and its publisher, AAAS, the nonprofit science society, have recognized this first quantum machine as the 2010 Breakthrough of the Year. They have also compiled nine other important scientific accomplishments from this past year into a top ten list, appearing in a special news feature in the journal's 17 December 2010 issue. Additionally, Science news writers and editors have chosen to spotlight 10 "Insights of the Decade" that have transformed the landscape of science in the 21st Century.

"This year's Breakthrough of the Year represents the first time that scientists have demonstrated quantum effects in the motion of a human-made object," said Adrian Cho, a news writer for Science. "On a conceptual level that's cool because it extends quantum mechanics into a whole new realm. On a practical level, it opens up a variety of possibilities ranging from new experiments that meld quantum control over light, electrical currents and motion to, perhaps someday, tests of the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality."

The quantum machine proves that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to the motion of macroscopic objects, as well as atomic and subatomic particles. It provides the key first step toward gaining complete control over an object's vibrations at the quantum level. Such control over the motion of an engineered device should allow scientists to manipulate those minuscule movements, much as they now control electrical currents and particles of light. In turn, that capability may lead to new devices to control the quantum states of light, ultra-sensitive force detectors and, ultimately, investigations into the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality. (This last grand goal might be achieved by trying to put a macroscopic object in a state in which it's literally in two slightly different places at the same time—an experiment that might reveal precisely why something as big as a human can't be in two places at the same time.)

"Mind you, physicists still haven't achieved a two-places-at-once state with a tiny object like this one," said Cho. "But now that they have reached the simplest state of quantum motion, it seems a whole lot more obtainable—more like a matter of 'when' than 'if.'"

Science's list of the nine other groundbreaking achievements from 2010 follows. …

Science's breakthrough of the year: The first quantum machine

Technorati Tags: quantum,nanotechnology

Scientists decipher 3 billion-year-old genomic fossils

2010-12-19T11:16:00.001-08:00

Analysis of modern-day genomes finds evidence for ancient environmental change and a massive expansion in genetic diversity

Contact: Denise Brehm, brehm@mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

About 580 million years ago, life on Earth began a rapid period of change called the Cambrian Explosion, a period defined by the birth of new life forms over many millions of years that ultimately helped bring about the modern diversity of animals. Fossils help palaeontologists chronicle the evolution of life since then, but drawing a picture of life during the 3 billion years that preceded the Cambrian Period is challenging, because the soft-bodied Precambrian cells rarely left fossil imprints. However, those early life forms did leave behind one abundant microscopic fossil: DNA.

Because all living organisms inherit their genomes from ancestral genomes, computational biologists at MIT reasoned that they could use modern-day genomes to reconstruct the evolution of ancient microbes. They combined information from the ever-growing genome library with their own mathematical model that takes into account the ways that genes evolve: new gene families can be born and inherited; genes can be swapped or horizontally transferred between organisms; genes can be duplicated in the same genome; and genes can be lost.

The scientists traced thousands of genes from 100 modern genomes back to those genes' first appearance on Earth to create a genomic fossil telling not only when genes came into being but also which ancient microbes possessed those genes. The work suggests that the collective genome of all life underwent an expansion between 3.3 and 2.8 billion years ago, during which time 27 percent of all presently existing gene families came into being.

Eric Alm, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Biological Engineering, and Lawrence David, who recently received his Ph.D. from MIT and is now a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, have named this period the Archean Expansion.

Because so many of the new genes they identified are related to oxygen, Alm and David first thought that the emergence of oxygen might be responsible for the Archean Expansion. Oxygen did not exist in the Earth's atmosphere until about 2.5 billion years ago when it began to accumulate, likely killing off vast numbers of anerobic life forms in the Great Oxidation Event.

"The Great Oxidation Event was probably the most catastrophic event in the history of cellular life, but we don't have any biological record of it," says Alm.

Closer inspection, however, showed that oxygen-utilizing genes didn't appear until the tail end of the Archean Expansion 2.8 billion years ago, which is more consistent with the date geochemists assign to the Great Oxidation Event. …

Scientists decipher 3 billion-year-old genomic fossils

Technorati Tags: genetic engineering,evolutionary biology,MIT

News Corp to go carbon neutral – Fox News still denies climate change

2010-12-17T07:31:00.001-08:00

By Kate Sheppard
Thu Dec. 16, 2010 10:34 AM PST

The Fox News memo on how to "report" on global warming (i.e., suggest the science behind it is fatally flawed) got a lot of attention on Wednesday. Not that anyone was particularly surprised—you can turn on Fox most days and see that policy in action.

But while management at Fox is still banking on sowing doubt about climate change, the big-wigs at parent company News Corp. aren't. Earlier this year I reported at length about News Corp.'s effort to go carbon neutral. Rupert Murdoch has argued that dealing with global warming is not only the right thing to do, it's good for the corporation's bottom line. Yeah, all that stuff about how global warming is just Al Gore's pipe dream? The boss man doesn't think that.

Here's a letter from Murdoch on the initiative (it apparently hasn't trickled down to Washington managing editor Bill Sammon quite yet):

News Corporation has always been about imagining the future and then making that vision a reality. We seek new ways to reach our global audiences and we address those issues that have the greatest impact on their lives. Global climate change is clearly one of those issues. So how do we, as a media company, do our part to confront this challenge?

It starts with us. We must first get our house in order. In May of 2007, we launched a global energy initiative across News Corporation to reduce our energy use and impact on the climate. Our goals are to fully understand our carbon and energy impact, to reduce that impact significantly and to inspire our employees to take action on this issue in their business and personal lives.

News Corp.'s initiative is paying off: Climate Counts, a nonprofit that scores companies' efforts to deal with climate change, gave the company a glowing review just last week. It's a sad irony that, while the parent corporation is doing the right thing, Fox executives are still selling the idea that climate change is giant hoax crafted by conniving scientists and liberals to force us all to live like cavemen again (or whatever it is they want the American public to believe).

Wood Turner, the executive director of Climate Counts, writes via email:

Apparently, Bill Sammon didn't get Mr. Murdoch's climate memo. Fox News has been ignoring its own parent company's strong climate stance for a long time now. If News Corp is as committed as Mr. Murdoch says to inspiring and educating its audiences and its employees about its vision, it could start by making sure Fox News stops misrepresenting the basic facts.

Good on Murdoch for making strides on the impacts of his empire. But it's more than a bit hypocritical that Fox News, likely his most influential product in the US, continues to warp the public's understanding of the issue.

Fox Climate Coverage Irony Alert!

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

New data shows REDD+ is succeeding

2010-12-16T08:22:00.001-08:00

Commentary by Doug Boucher, special to www.mongabay.com
December 15, 2010

Guest commentary by Doug Boucher, director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at the Union of Concerned Scientists

Amid the whirlwind of climate change news before and after the Cancún climate conference, including a landmark agreement on REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation, and related pro-forest actions), an important story seems to have passed by with little notice. Over the past two months, several new analyses have given clear evidence that deforestation has gone down over the past several years. In fact, the drop is quite impressive, and shows that of all the approaches to avoiding the worst consequences of global warming, reducing tropical deforestation is the one that has contributed by far the most to date.

The first analysis to come out, in October, was the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) for 2010. This compendium of data from all the countries on the planet is released every five years, and provides the broadest look at the state of the world’s forests. The new FRA data showed that tropical deforestation in the first decade of the 2000s was down 18% from the level of the 1990s, dropping from 11.33 million hectares per year in the 1990s to 9.34 million hectares per year in the 2000s. Furthermore, the rate dropped from the first 5 years of the decade to the second five years, principally due to a dramatic decline in Brazilian Amazon deforestation. The FRA 2010 data also showed that the rate of primary forest loss, not just total forest loss, has declined. …

New data shows REDD+ is succeeding

Technorati Tags: deforestation,rainforest,carbon market,carbon reduction,carbon accounting

Dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors, act very silly

2010-11-26T10:05:00.001-08:00

CNN's Randi Kaye goes down in an underwater lab to see how dolphins react to themselves in a mirror.

[Randi Kaye observes that dolphins’ "high levels of intelligence are, in many ways, much like our own,” and she asks scientist Diana Reiss , “If that's true, what does that tell us?"

It tells us that dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'. Ethically and legally, slaughtering them in such places as Taiji and the Faroes should be considered murder.]

Dolphins see themselves in mirror

Technorati Tags: marine mammal,dolphin

World mayors sign climate change pact

2010-11-22T18:40:00.001-08:00

Mexico City (AFP) Nov 21, 2010 - Mayors from around the world signed a voluntary pact in Mexico City on Sunday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a meeting meant as a precursor to next week's s UN-sponsored talks in Cancun.

The gathering in one of the world's most polluted cities assembled some 3,000 local and regional leaders to discuss a wide range of economic and social issues, including climate change.

Participants from some 135 cities and urban areas signed a pact committing them to adopt a slate of measures to stem climate change.

The pact will be presented at next week's UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico from November 29-December 10.

Top climate scientists from around the world hope in Cancun to break the deadlock on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and channeling aid to poor, vulnerable countries after the widely regarded failure of the last climate summit in Copenhagen.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, the current president of the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), opened the mayoral gathering, set to last four days.

"We have to tell the international community that it's in the cities that the battle to slow global warming will be won," Ebrard said in the lead-up to the meeting. …

World mayors sign climate change pact

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

The CRU Hack: One year later

2010-11-21T10:23:00.001-08:00

By Gavin Schmidt
20 November 2010

I woke up on Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009 completely unaware of what was about to unfold. I tried to log in to RealClimate, but for some reason my login did not work. Neither did the admin login. I logged in to the back-end via ssh, only to be inexplicably logged out again. I did it again. No dice. I then called the hosting company and told them to take us offline until I could see what was going on. When I did get control back from the hacker (and hacker it was), there was a large uploaded file on our server, and a draft post ready to go announcing the theft of the CRU emails. And so it began.

From that Friday, and for about 3 weeks afterward, we were drafted into the biggest context-setting exercise we’d ever been involved in. What was the story with Soon and Baliunas? What is the difference between tree ring density and tree ring width? What papers were being discussed in email X? What was Trenberth talking about? Or Wigley? Or Briffa or Jones? Who were any of this people anyway? The very specificity of the emails meant that it was hard for the broader scientific community to add informed comment, and so the burden on the people directly involved was high.

The posts we put up initially are still valid today – and the 1000’s of comment stand as testimony to the contemporary fervour of the conversation:

The CRU Hack

The CRU Hack: Context

Where’s the Data?

The CRU Hack: More Context

I think we did pretty well considering – no other site, nor set of scientists (not even at UEA) provided so much of the background to counter the inevitable misinterpretations that starting immediately spreading. While some commentators were predicting resignations, retractions and criminal charges, we noted that there had not been any scientific misconduct, and predicted that this is what the inquiries would find and that the science would not be affected. (Note, the most thorough inquiry, and one that will have to withstand judicial review, is the one by EPA which, strangely enough, has barely been discussed in the blogosphere). …

One year later

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

All viruses ‘can be DNA stowaways’

2010-11-19T17:47:00.001-08:00

(PhysOrg.com) -- 'Fossil viruses' preserved inside the DNA of mammals and insects suggest that all viruses, including relatives of HIV and Ebola, could potentially be ‘stowaways’ transmitted from generation to generation for millions of years, according to new research.

A team from Oxford University and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center built on earlier work at Oxford that discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient HIV-like virus in the genomes of animals including sloths, lemurs and rabbits.

The team’s new research, reported in this week’s PLoS Genetics, shows that many more different types of viruses are endogenous – capable of being transmitted from generation to generation – with ‘fossil viruses’ turning up in the genomes of creatures as different as mosquitoes, wallabies, and humans.

‘Many of these viruses, such as the ancestors of Ebola, are far more ancient and spread across many more animal groups than anyone ever suspected,’ said Dr Aris Katzourakis of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, an author of the report. ‘We’ve demonstrated that viruses have been integrating within animal genomes for at least 100 million years.’

‘We’ve also shown that, in some cases, viral genes have been domesticated by their hosts, and put to use by the hosts for their own purposes, demonstrating that captured viral sequences may have played a larger than expected role in animal evolution.’ …

All viruses 'can be DNA stowaways'

Technorati Tags: evolutionary biology

The tortoise and the solar plant

2010-11-16T09:02:00.001-08:00

By Sarah McBride
October 30, 2010

Mercy Vaughn crouches over a young tortoise peeking out from its burrow near a creosote bush in California's Mojave Desert.

The area is home to rare species, including the threatened desert tortoise. But a giant solar plant is under construction in the vast wilderness area.

To help save the animal, the company building the plant, BrightSource Energy, had to agree to a lot of conditions, including reptile relocation.

Vaughn, a biologist from Texas, and her colleague Peter Woodman are leading a team of 50 biologists hired to survey the site over and over before construction begins. They have to keep track of every single tortoise.

"This is one that was walking down the middle of the road when it was spotted by one of the monitors," Woodman says. "Luckily, we've got a radio transmitter on it now."

He's looking at an adult female tortoise; she's about the size of a dinner plate, and the transmitter is glued to her shell. It almost looks like a stray twig. …

The tortoises can't stay where construction crews might harm them, so the biologists are moving them to pens to ride out the desert winter. In the spring, they'll try relocating them to the wild.

BrightSource is spending more than $40 million to protect plants and wildlife. That includes buying acres of land to keep as nature preserves. …

The Tortoise And The Solar Plant: A Mojave Story

Technorati Tags: solar power,California,conservation

Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming denialists

2010-11-08T07:18:00.001-08:00

[It’s about time. –Jim]

The American Geophysical Union plans to announce that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue. Other scientists plan a pushback against congressional conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

By Neela Banerjee, Tribune Washington Bureau
November 8, 2010

Reporting from Washington —
Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election.

On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.

John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate change skeptics, is also pulling together a "climate rapid response team," which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows.

"This group feels strongly that science and politics can't be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists," said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.

"We are taking the fight to them because we are … tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed."

During the recent campaigns, skepticism about climate change became a rallying cry for many Republican candidates. Of the more than 100 new GOP members of Congress, 50% are climate change skeptics, according to an analysis of campaign statements by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. …

Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming skeptics via Wit’s End

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

Californians defy oil industry to save climate law

2010-11-03T07:09:00.001-07:00

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 3 November 2010 at 11:30:00

Proposition 23 defeated as voters back climate change laws, despite multimillion-dollar campaign from oil giants

California yesterday retained its position as one of the global leaders in clean technology and climate change policy, after voters rejected a proposition that would have indefinitely suspended the state's flagship climate change bill.

With results from 48 precincts having been reported, "no" votes against Proposition 23 stood at 59 per cent, representing a significant victory for green campaigners including Bill Gates, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Avatar director James Cameron, as well as current state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Michael Eckhart, president of trade group the American Council on Renewable Energy, told Reuters: "This is reaffirmation that we are a country of some enlightenment. A majority of Californians, even in great stress of unemployment and economic demise, will still accept this responsibility. Rejecting an attempt to destroy the environment is a good thing. "

Prop 23 would have suspended the state's AB 32 law until unemployment fell to 5.5 per cent or less for four straight quarters.

Commentators argued that the move would have effectively scrapped the legislation altogether as the state's current unemployment rate is running at over 10 per cent and has dipped below 5.5 per cent for only two short periods in the last 20 years.

The vote means that California will retain its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, ensuring a third of the state's electricity comes from renewable sources by the same date and launching a regional emissions trading scheme.

The vote represents a major victory for green businesses and environmental groups after Republican politicians and out-of-state oil companies waged a high-profile campaign in favour of Prop 23, spending millions on TV ads in support of the proposition. …

Californians defy oil industry to save climate law

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,California

R.I.P. Benoît Mandelbrot

2010-10-21T19:27:00.001-07:00

It’s with great sadness that I read about the passing of Benoît B. Mandelbrot, renowned as the Father of Fractal Geometry. He taught me more about the universe than any other individual.

I first read about fractal geometry in the late ‘70s, probably in Scientific American or Byte magazine, and this inspired me to program my Exidy Sorcerer to generate Mandelbrot Set images.

The Exidy Sorcerer personal computer, 1978–1980.

Lest we forget, that machine had a Zilog Z80 processor running at 2 MHz, with 8 kilobytes of RAM (expandable to 32K); it took many minutes to generate a small monochrome view that was 100x100 pixels.

Old-skool monochrome Mandelbrot Set, circa 1979.

My fascination with fractals endured throughout the ‘80s – my final project in my Digital Systems class (6.111) was an EPROM / microcode implementation of a Mandelbrot Set engine. It could generate a 256x256 image in a minute or two.

Old-skool 256-color Mandelbrot Set, circa 1986.

As a senior in 1987, I was fortunate to attend a lecture by Professor Mandelbrot in the venerable room 10-250. He was charming, self-effacing, and spoke with a clarity that elicited little bursts of illumination in my brain.

The late ‘80s saw a wave of interest in fractal geometry, both in the scientific and popular literature. One of the best books to emerge was Michael Barnsley’s Fractals Everywhere, which brought a mathematical rigor to the subject that was accessible to dilettantes like me.

Fractals Everywhere, by Michael Barnsley, 1988.

This book inspired me to do a bit of analysis myself, so I persuaded my employer at the time (Boeing) to let me roam the company looking for chaotic dynamics in various data sets. It was a lot of fun, and I got a paper and a conference trip to New Orleans out of it.

My second encounter with Professor Mandelbrot was in 2004, when he gave a presentation to Microsoft Research, discussing his work in applying multifractal analysis to market data. With devastating efficiency, he eviscerated Black-Shoales and the underpinnings of portfolio theory (hint: market data are not IID). I suspect that he was not surprised by the global financial collapse of 2008.

The (Mis)behavior of Markets, by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson, 2004.

Today, chaos theory and fractal geometry drift in and out of my career, with fun diversions like this generative architecture project:

Gennaro Senatore: Morphogenesis of Spatial Configurations, 2009.

Here’s a quick phase-space reconstruction of 100,000 millenia of simulated insolation on Summer Solstice at 65N latitude.

Poincaré map for 100 million years of Earth’s wiggles.

Benoît Mandelbrot’s work has formed the background for my entire adult life. Maybe he’ll receive a posthumous Nobel Prize. The man who gave us this certainly deserves it:

Partial view of the Mandelbrot set, by Wolfgang Beyer with the program Ultra Fractal 3.

Thank you, Benoît Mandelbrot.

Technorati Tags: fractal,chaos

Why did Google bet $1 million on Shweeb?

2010-10-12T17:55:00.001-07:00

By Kyle Almond, CNN
October 12, 2010 8:59 a.m. EDT | Filed under: Innovation

(CNN) -- Living in Tokyo, Japan, during the late '90s, Geoffrey Barnett found it extremely difficult -- even dangerous -- to ride his bicycle to work every day.

"The traffic is incredible, and there's so much pollution," said Barnett, an Australian who worked in the city as an English teacher.

His students shared his frustration, and they would often talk about Tokyo's jam-packed streets during class.

"It was always a topic of discussion that motivated the students to talk, because it was a part of their life as well," Barnett recalled.

Out of those frequent discussions evolved Barnett's idea for Shweeb, a system of personal, pedal-powered monorail pods that he hopes can one day become an alternative form of urban transit. With Shweeb, pods hang from an elevated track that, theoretically, would stretch to destinations throughout a city.

"Cumbersome, jammed-up cities of today should be rendered into completely accessible worlds once you've got a way to shoot over the traffic," said Barnett, who derived the name Shweeb from the German word "schweben," which means to hang, hover or float. He left Tokyo in 2000 to design a prototype.

Barnett's vision received a significant boost last month when Google awarded Shweeb $1 million for research and development. Shweeb was one of five winners of Project 10^100, Google's "call for ideas to change the world." …

Why did Google bet $1 million on Shweeb?

Technorati Tags: transportation

After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

2010-10-11T08:30:00.001-07:00

By George Altman, Press-Register
Monday, October 11, 2010

WASHINGTON — Alabama and Mississippi are paying landowners $6.75 million in total to create artificial marshes, typically by flooding farm fields, for birds deprived of natural marshland by the oil spill, according to government information.

Top conservation officials in both states said that the decision to launch the federal program, dubbed the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was made in the early stages of the spill, when no one knew how much oil would gush or for how long.

Although the surface of Gulf waters and shores appears to have escaped a worst-case scenario, they say the program is still doing good.

“Had we done nothing and then the worst would have happened, where would we be?” said Alabama State Conservationist William Puckett. …

Homer Wilkes, state conservationist for Mississippi, said that the “ounce of prevention” represented by the program is far better than the “pound of cure” that would have been required had birds been limited to oiled marshes. …

Puckett said that regardless of the program’s initial spill-related mission, new places for migratory birds to rest are beneficial. “The positive is, we did create thousands and thousands of acres of additional bird habitat,” he said. …

After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

Technorati Tags: wetland,oil spill,oil production,environmental restoration,bird decline,agriculture

Cuccinelli goes fishing again: Virginia AG revives witch hunt against climate scientist

2010-10-05T08:33:00.001-07:00

— RealClimate @ 4 October 2010

In keeping with our role as a site that tries to deal with the science of climate change rather than the politics, we have specifically refrained from commenting on various politically-motivated legal shenanigans relating to climate science. Some of them have involved us directly, but we didn’t (don’t) want to have RC become just a blog about us. However, the latest move by Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia, against Mike Mann and UVa is so ridiculous it needs to be highlighted to the widest audience possible.

For background, Rosalind Helderman at the Washington Post has covered most of the story. The last installment was that Cuccinelli’s attempt to subpoena 10 years of emails between 39 scientists and Mike Mann and ‘all documents’ residing at UVa related to four federal and one Commonwealth of Virginia grant, was thrown out by a judge because Cuccinelli did not provide any reason to suspect that fraud had occurred and that federal grants are not covered by the relevant statute. Without due cause, the AG is not allowed to investigate (and without such a restriction, there would be no end to politically motivated witch hunts).

Yesterday, Cuccinelli filed a new demand that takes this previous judgment into account. Namely, he attempts to give a reason to suspect fraud and only targets the Commonwealth grant – though still asks for 10 years of emails with an assortment of scientists. However, his reasoning should scare the bejesus of anyone who has ever published a paper on any topic that any attorney might have a political grudge against. …

Cuccinelli goes fishing again

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,corruption

Good news from Italy: the Kitegen is in motion

2010-10-05T07:37:00.001-07:00

Posted by Ugo Bardi
October 4, 2010 - 5:23am

I am just back from a trip to Piedmont, Northern Italy, where I have visited the construction site of the new prototype of the Kitegen; the high altitude wind power (or "Airborne Wind Energy", AWE) system being developed by Kitegen Research s.r.l., headed by Massimo Ippolito. I can bring good news to you: the kitegen project is in motion. After a first, reduced scale prototype, built and tested two years ago, now a full size system is being completed.

The Kitegen is a very innovative technology based on the idea of capturing the abundant energy of high altitude winds. It uses a kite that is launched from a ground based structure that contains all the machinery and control systems. The kite is expected to fly at altitudes up to 2000 meters and to provide energy by pulling on a set of cables that act on a power generator.

The promise of the kitegen is remarkable; preliminary calculations indicate an EROEI better than anything that can be obtained by traditional wind or solar technologies. However, one thing is paper, another is the reality of putting together a machine that had never been built before. It is an incredible challenge that Massimo Ippolito has taken onto himself and that he is succeeding in overcoming; step by step. …

Good news from Italy: the Kitegen is in motion

Technorati Tags: wind power,wind turbine

Genetically altered trees and plants could help counter global warming

2010-10-02T12:59:00.001-07:00

Forests of genetically altered trees and other plants could sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and so help ameliorate global warming, according to estimates published in the October issue of BioScience.

The study [pdf], by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, outlines a variety of strategies for augmenting the processes that plants use to sequester carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into long-lived forms of carbon, first in vegetation and ultimately in soil. Besides increasing the efficiency of plants' absorption of light, researchers might be able to genetically alter plants so they send more carbon into their roots—where some may be converted into soil carbon and remain out of circulation for centuries. Other possibilities include altering plants so that they can better withstand the stresses of growing on marginal land, and so that they yield improved bioenergy and food crops. Such innovations might in combination boost substantially the amount of carbon that vegetation naturally extracts from air, according to the authors' estimates. The researchers stress that the use of genetically engineered plants for carbon sequestration is only one of many policy initiatives and technical tools that might boost the carbon sequestration already occurring in natural vegetation and crops.

The article, by Christer Jansson, Stan D. Wullschleger, Udaya C. Kalluri, and Gerald A. Tuskan, is the first in a Special Section in the October BioScience that includes several perspectives on the prospects for enhancing biological carbon sequestration. Other articles in the section analyze the substantial ecological and economic constraints that limit such efforts. One article discusses the prospects for sequestering carbon by culturing algae to produce biofuel feedstocks; one proposes a modification of the current regulatory climate for producing genetically engineered trees in the United States; and one discusses societal perceptions of the issues surrounding the use of genetically altered organisms to ameliorate warming attributed to the buildup of greenhouse gases.

Genetically Altered Trees and Plants Could Help Counter Global Warming

Technorati Tags: biofuel,biotechnology,genetic engineering,carbon sequestration,carbon capture,greenhouse gas,carbon dioxide,bioenergy

Techo-leapfrogging at its best: 2,000 Indian villages skip fossil fuels, get first electricity from solar

2010-09-22T10:50:00.001-07:00

By Matthew McDermott, New York, NY
09.22.10

If you ever need a great example of technological leapfrogging in practice, here it is: In the Indian state of Orissa, the state government has decided to electrify approximately an additional 2,000 villages by March 2012. But rather than hook them up to coal-fired power plants, it will be using decentralized solar power. Biomass, wind power and a variety of small-scale hydropower projects are also in the mix.

Express Buzz reports that currently there are 395 villages powered through solar, with an additional 205 to be completed by the end of the year. Detailed reports to deploy solar to at the remaining villages are being drawn up.

Further renewable energy development in Orissa includes 118 MW of biomass plants, with 20 MW of that to be completed soon. Two wind power projects, 150 MW in size are in the works, with surveys for 22 more locations underway. Micro, mini and small-scale hydropower projects are also planned for deliver an additional 300 MW. …

Techo-Leapfrogging At Its Best: 2,000 Indian Villages Skip Fossil Fuels, Get First Electricity From Solar

Technorati Tags: solar power,wind power,biomass,India

Canceled coal plants show carbon trade is working, Barclays analyst says

2010-09-21T09:06:00.001-07:00

By Mathew Carr - Sep 14, 2010 4:24 AM PT

Planned investment by European utilities and RWE AG’s cancellation of a coal plant in Poland demonstrates that emissions trading works, according to an analyst at the investment bank of Barclays Plc.

One European utility wants to boost its renewable energy capacity to 21 gigawatts by 2020 from 2.2 gigawatts this year, Trevor Sikorksi, a London-based analyst at Barclays Capital, said in a Sept. 13 research note, citing a speech at one of the bank’s conferences. He didn’t name the company.

Essen-based RWE plans to halt construction of the 800- megawatt coal-fired power plant near Katowice, southern Poland, showing “how extensively the investment behavior of companies in large-emitting sectors has changed with the introduction of the European Union emissions-trading system,” he said. The program started in 2005.

Canceled Coal Plants Show Carbon Trade Is Working, Barclays Analyst Says

Technorati Tags: coal,carbon market,Europe

Potomac River: 10-fold increase in native submerged vegetation reflects improved water quality

2010-09-07T22:11:00.001-07:00

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2010) — The Potomac River in Washington, D.C. is showing multiple benefits from restoration efforts, newly published research suggests.Reduced nutrients and improved water clarity have increased the abundance and diversity of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the Potomac, according to direct measurements taken during the 18-year field study.

Since 1990, the area covered by SAV in the lower Potomac has doubled, the area covered by native SAV has increased ten-fold, the diversity of plant species has increased, and the proportion of exotic species to native species has declined as nutrients have declined, according to the study by the U.S. Geological Survey and England's National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southhampton, UK.

"Improvements to plant communities living at the bottom of the river have occurred nearly in lock step with decreases in nutrients and sediment in the water and incremental reductions in nitrogen effluent entering the river from the wastewater treatment plant for the Washington DC area," said USGS scientist Dr. Nancy Rybicki.

More than a dozen species of SAV, including the exotic hydrilla, co-exist in this reach of the Potomac that was almost barren in a 1978-1981 USGS study.

"People want to know that money spent on ecosystem restoration is having tangible results, but many feel that efforts to clean up Chesapeake Bay have so far had limited success," said researcher Dr Henry Ruhl of the NOC.

"Upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant have benefited SAV habitats 50-miles downstream. These findings underscore the benefits of nutrient reduction efforts on a major tributary to the Chesapeake Bay," said Rybicki, who has been conducting research on the Potomac since 1979.

"Our results suggest that widespread recovery of submerged vegetation abundance and diversity can be achievable if restoration efforts are enhanced across the bay," said Henry Ruhl of the National Oceanography Centre. "There are many other estuaries globally where nutrients have been identified as contributing to SAV habitat decline, so restoration is an issue for many governments." …

Potomac River: 10-fold increase in native submerged vegetation reflects improved water quality

Technorati Tags: environmental restoration,sewage,nitrogen,eutrophication,dead zone

Insurers demand key role in climate adaptation

2010-09-07T07:35:00.001-07:00

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 00:15:00

Coalition of insurance firms issue statement urging governments to support public-private initiatives designed to accelerate rollout of climate-related insurance policies

Over 100 of the world's leading insurance companies joined forces yesterday to urge world leaders to draw on the industry's expertise to shape climate adaptation policies for developing countries being worked on as part of the UN's climate change negotiations.

The Prince of Wales's ClimateWise insurance industry group, the Geneva Association think tank, UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, which together represent the world's leading insurance and risk management firms, co-ordinated the joint statement calling on governments to better support proven insurance mechanisms for tackling climate change risks.

The four-page statement [pdf], which was released on the eve of the British government's Capital Markets Climate Initiative conference in London, argues that public-private initiatives would allow insurers to extend climate-related policies to developing economies that would help them to manage the risks posed by extreme weather events.

Specifically it calls on governments to formally acknowledge the role of the insurance industry in the on-going UN climate change negotiations and deliver funding and regulatory frameworks that enable the wider rollout of climate-related insurance products.

Andrew Torrance, chairman of ClimateWise and chief executive of Allianz Insurance, said that it was in governments' own interests to utilise the risk management skills found in the insurance industry. …

Insurers demand key role in climate adaptation

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

Listening in on my brainwaves

2010-09-06T17:17:00.001-07:00

Here I am doing a demo of my near-realtime brainwave-to-sound program. Occasionally, my brainwaves sound like something by György Ligeti.

Brainwave to soundwave demonstration

Technorati Tags: brainwave,neurodata

HP competition winner has rooftop farms, plugin units

2010-09-03T08:26:00.001-07:00

The HP Skyline 2020 competition "outlined fresh visual imaginations for the skyline discarding preconceived notions" and "allowed students and professionals to partner and elucidate their visions and designs that would change the skyline thereby transforming the city itself."

The winners, Anto Gloren, Sayali Athale, and Pune, hung 1000 square foot units from towers in a tensegrity structure. Their roofs are all used for agriculture, their waste is purified and used to water the farm on the next level down, and biowaste and human waste is treated and turned into biofuel to create energy for the project. The designers try to address the food crisis, the water crisis and the energy crisis …

HP Competition Winner Has Rooftop Farms, Plugin Units

Technorati Tags: green architecture

6 global warming skeptics who changed their minds

2010-09-01T17:22:00.001-07:00

Climate change doubters have just lost one of their leading lights, as writer Bjorn Lomborg calls for a worldwide carbon tax. But he's not the first high-profile defector

posted on September 1, 2010, at 2:15 PM

With 2010 shaping up as the warmest year on record and unprecedented heat waves gripping the planet, global warming skeptics have suffered another blow with the defection of the "most high-profile" member of their camp, author Bjorn Lomborg. But Lomborg isn't the first doubter to accept the scientific consensus that human carbon emissions are warming the planet and need to be curtailed. Here, a review of several prominent cases:

1. Bjorn Lomborg, Danish academic

Lomborg made waves with his 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which argued that global warming was no big deal, and fighting it would be a waste of money. This month, he's publishing Smart Solutions to Climate Change, which argues that a global carbon tax should be imposed to raise $150 billion a year to address global warming.
Before quote: "In 20 years' time, we’ll look back and wonder why we worried so much." (2002)

After quote: "We actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming." (2010)

2. Dmitri Medvedev, Russian president

Russian leaders are famously skeptical of global warming, with then–President Vladimir Putin quipping in 2003 that a warmer Russia "wouldn't be so bad" because "we could spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would go up." Then Russia caught fire this summer, choking Moscow with deadly smoke, devastating agricultural production, and convincing Medvedev and other leaders that perhaps global warming is a threat, after all.

Before quote: Climate change is "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects." (2009)

After quote: "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past." (2010) …

6 global warming skeptics who changed their minds

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

Climate change and the wealth of nations

2010-08-31T17:35:00.001-07:00

By EDWARD L. GLAESER
August 31, 2010, 6:00 am

The pressing needs of a great recession crowd out interest in global warming. The environmental economists Matthew Kahn and Matthew Kotchen have found that a higher state unemployment rate is associated with a decrease in Google searches for the term “global warming” and a lower “probability that residents think global warming is happening.” But I hope enough readers can tear themselves away from the current downturn to look at Professor Kahn’s engaging and provocative new book, Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future.

Professor Kahn has been one of my favorite economists and co-authors since we studied urban economics together 20 years ago. He made his name working on the intersection of urban and environmental economics, on topics like the silver lining of the Rust Belt’s decline. The improvement of air quality in deindustrializing places like Pittsburgh seems to have attracted skilled people and boosted the local economy. He has done important work with his wife, Dora Costa, on the correlates of cowardice during the Civil War, and he now maintains one of the more enjoyable economics blogs.

Professor Kahn isn’t skeptical about global warming, but he is (quite reasonably) skeptical about our ability individually and collectively to reduce carbon emissions: “attempts to reduce or reverse our carbon output — to mitigate the damage that we’ve already done — aren’t going so well” and “evidence shows that very few individuals have cut back on their carbon-producing activities at all.” Consequently, he predicts, “the world is going to get hotter.”

But while this would lead many people to doomsday scenarios, Professor Kahn is an optimist who believes “that we will save ourselves by adapting to our ever-changing circumstances.” He says this salvation will come from “a multitude of self-interested people armed only with their wits and access to capital markets.” In short, the same economic system that led to global warming will rescue us from it.

Professor Kahn emphasizes that “migration is crucial for reducing the costs we incur from a given shock,” that moving from places that have become less unbearably hot to places that have become more pleasant — “the ability to ‘vote with your feet’ and migrate to other cities” — acts as an insurance policy. If hot places become unbearable, then once unfashionably icy places will boom. That seems reasonable to me, although there will be plenty of social loss if we abandon cities where we have invested billions in infrastructure. …

Climate Change and the Wealth of Nations

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,climate refugees,economics

Slowing urban sprawl, adding forests curb floods and help rivers

2010-08-31T07:17:00.001-07:00

By Brian Wallheimer
August 18, 2010

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Controlling urban growth and increasing forested land are the most effective ways to decrease future water runoff and flooding, according to a Purdue University study.

Bryan Pijanowski, an associate professor of forestry and natural resources, used a model to simulate Michigan's Muskegon River watershed runoff rates from 1900 through the present and forecast them 30 years into the future. Several scenarios, including forest regrowth, urbanization, and buffers between development and streams, were analyzed to estimate their impact on rivers and streams.

"Changes in the land's surface feed back to runoff. Urban sprawl and impervious surfaces are the biggest culprits," Pijanowski said. "If you're able to control development, it is the most effective way to save our river ecosystem."

Pijanowski said urban areas in the United States would double in 20 years at the current rate. In the model predictions, doubling the urban area in the Muskegon River watershed would increase runoff by 1 1/2 times.

Excess runoff can have several consequences, including flooding, increases in agricultural nutrients and urban pollutants entering nearby water and affecting aquatic life, increases in water temperature in rivers and streams that can affect aquatic life, and changes in the apportionment of water to wetlands and groundwater.

Pijanowski's findings, published in the early online version of the journal Environmental Management, suggest that slowing the rate of urban sprawl would be the most effective way to reduce or control runoff. Adding forest near rivers and streams and requiring buffer zones between those waterways and development also could help. …

Slowing urban sprawl, adding forests curb floods and help rivers

Technorati Tags: population,urban sprawl,forest,environmental restoration

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri cleared of financial misdealings or conflict of interest -- UK Telegraph apologizes for smearing him

2010-08-26T14:56:00.001-07:00

By Joe Romm
August 26, 2010

“No evidence was found that indicated personal fiduciary benefits accruing to Pachauri from his various advisory roles that would have led to a conflict of interest.”

That’s the finding of a detailed report by KPMG on the finances of Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A great many U.S. reporters and bloggers owe an apology to Pachauri (see “N.Y. Times and Elisabeth Rosenthal Face Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage“).

Let’s see if they own up to it as the UK’s Telegraph finally did:

On 20 December 2009 we published an article about Dr Pachauri and his business interests. It was not intended to suggest that Dr Pachauri was corrupt or abusing his position as head of the IPCC and we accept KPMG found Dr Pachauri had not made “millions of dollars” in recent years. We apologise to Dr Pachauri for any embarrassment caused.

In fact, suggesting Pachauri was corrupt or abusing his position was the whole point of the story, which has been removed from their website but which you can easily find on right-wing websites by googling the title: “Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri” by Christopher Booker and Richard North. …

KPMG review finds IPCC chief Pachauri innocent of financial misdealings or conflict of interest, UK Telegraph apologizes for smearing him

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

German scientist hands Putin frosty climate rebuke

2010-08-24T07:26:00.001-07:00

Moscow (AFP) Aug 23, 2010 - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin queried Monday whether man was to blame for climate change on a visit to the remote Russian Arctic, only to find himself bluntly contradicted by a German scientist.

Putin, known for his tough-guy visits to his country's most far-flung areas, went by helicopter to a Russian-German research station on an island at the mouth of the Lena River in the Far Eastern Yakutia region on the Arctic Ocean.

Wearing a black jacket to protect against the wind on the Samoilovsky Island off the settlement of Tiksi, Putin was shown ice said to be up to 3,000 years old and handled bones from a now extinct mammoth.

"Does climate change happen because the earth is breathing, living, giving off gas, methane, or is it due to the influence of human activity?" mused Putin as he sat down to tea with the scientists in their hut.

He noted that "10,000 years ago, the mammoths started to die out. This was linked to a warming of the climate, a rise in sea levels, a reduction of pastures."

"All this happened without human influence," he said in comments broadcast on state television. …

A German female scientist working at the station however showed no fear in making her opinion clear to the Russian strongman.

"The burning of various kinds of fuel has a far greater effect on climate than these methane emissions," said Inken Preuss quoted by Russian news agencies.

"Climate change has never happened like now and mankind is making a large impact," she added. …

German scientist hands Putin frosty climate rebuke

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

Good riddance to overfishing: New management can end unsustainable practices

2010-08-23T07:20:00.001-07:00

Editor's note: This story is part of a series of online exclusives about natural phenomena and human endeavors we'd like to see come to an end. They are connected with the September 2010 special issue of Scientific American called "The End".

The meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES (pronounced "sight-eez") this past March was a decided defeat for the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Delegates voted 72 to 43 not to restrict fishing and international trade of the tuna so prized for its sushi that stocks are estimated to be at 15 percent of their historic levels. Although dismayed, conservationists remain upbeat, because they have at their disposal other management tools that could save the species.

Those strategies belong to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which actually has the job to manage tuna and tunalike species (a point argued by Japan and other opponents of a CITIES trade ban). Conservationists had forged ahead with a CITES effort anyway, because "we felt that a CITES ban would be a useful part of a package of tools to help reduce incentives for going over the quota," says Rebecca Lent, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of International Affairs and U.S. commissioner for ICCAT.

ICCAT, one of many regional fishery management organizations around the world, used a different tool to rebuild Atlantic swordfish populations (pdf) last September—namely, quotas. "The most important thing was setting the quotas at the appropriate level," Lent says, so that both the fish and the fishery economy can be sustained. To help enforce those limits, ICCAT tracked international trade to find countries that were catching (and selling) more fish than they reported. And domestically, the U.S. prohibited fisheries from waters where juvenile swordfish were getting killed as bycatch.
Still, getting countries to adhere to quotas is "the hardest challenge internationally," Lent says. Catch share programs, in which regional fishery councils divvy up quota shares to fishermen, could help ease this burden. Instead of creating a "struggle over a shrinking pie, you make [fishermen into] stakeholders, and that generates an incentive to be better stewards," says Frank Alcock, director of the Marine Policy Institute at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, the program helped cut halibut fishing levels by one quarter. …

Good Riddance to Overfishing: New Management Can End Unsustainable Practices

Technorati Tags: ocean overexploitation,overfishing,tuna,endangered species

Global firms applaud new greenhouse gas yardsticks

2010-08-21T10:31:00.001-07:00

BusinessGreen.com staff, BusinessGreen, Friday 20 August 2010 at 00:15:00

More than 60 companies complete road testing of new global standards for measuring carbon footprint of products and supply chains

More than 60 leading global firms have finished testing two new greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting standards, taking industry a step closer to a universal approach for measuring and managing emissions.

Sixty-two firms from 17 countries, including household names such as 3M, Deutsche Telekom and IKEA, tested blueprints for two new GHG protocol reporting and accounting standards.

The first protocol, dubbed "Product Lifecycle", provides a standardised approach for measuring the greenhouse gas emissions associated with individual products, while the second protocol, known as "Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain)" , covers emissions from a business's supply chain.

The standards were developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which said the new benchmarks should help firms and public sector organisations measure, analyse and manage GHG emissions through their wider value chains.

"Companies, policymakers and individuals are looking for ways to reduce their contribution to climate change, but do not always have the tools they need to make informed decisions," the partners said. "Increasingly, companies are looking beyond their own boundaries and developing strategies to reduce emissions in their supply chains and in the products they make and sell."

According to WRI and WBCSD, the majority of firms involved in the testing encountered little difficulty when using the protocols and were able to produce reports detailing their supply chain, or Scope 3, emissions. …

Global firms applaud new greenhouse gas yardsticks

Technorati Tags: carbon accounting,carbon footprint

More evidence for indigenous microfossils in carbonaceous meteorites

2010-08-17T19:50:00.001-07:00

By Brig Klyce
15 August 2010

At the Astrobiology XIII session, 3-5 August 2010, of this year's SPIE conference in San Diego, NASA scientist Richard Hoover showed more images that add weight to the case for fossilized cyanobacteria in meteorites. The fossils are found in carbonaceous meteorites of several types, including CI1 (example: Orgueil) and CM2 (example: Murchison). Here we present some typical and previously unpublished images from those meteorites.

The fossils are biological.

That the microfossils are the remnants of biological, once-living organisms is apparent from looking at them. Most resemble well-studied and recognizable filamentous cyanobacteria which are aquatic organisms long known as the "blue-green algae." These life-forms are among the dominant photosynthetic life forms in the oceans and lakes, but they also inhabit the polar ice caps as well as permafrost, geysers and volcanic fumaroles. These abilities make cyanbacteria ideal as potential life forms that could conceivably grow in the permafrost of Mars, the ice of Europa or in liquid water veins beneath the jet-black crusts of comets as candidate microbes that could conceivably be distributed throughout the cosmos by the agency of panspermia.

Chemical mapping shows that carbon and other life-critical bio-elements are distributed in the forms as appropriate for biological fossils, but the filaments are also infilled with Epsomite (hydrated magnesium sulfate), which was deposited in the hollow sheaths after the organisms died. Amino acids, nucleotides, and other life-critical biomolecules are found in the same carbonaceous meteorites that contain the fossils. The excess of L-amino acids, a property of the proteins in all living organisms known, is consistent with life — and with no known explanation by abiotic production processes (which yield equal numbers of the D- and L- forms). Clearly, the fossils found in the meteorites are biological.
Are they recent contaminants?

The major question is — were the microfossils present in the meteorites when they entered the Earth’s atmosphere, or were they left by modern microorganisms that entered the stones after they landed on Earth? …

More Evidence for Indigenous Microfossils in Carbonaceous Meteorites

Technorati Tags: exobiology

Genome of ancient sponge reveals origins of first animals, cancer

2010-08-04T20:20:00.001-07:00

The sponge, which was not recognized as an animal until the 19th century, is now the simplest and most ancient group of animals to have their genome sequenced.

In a paper appearing in the August 5 issue of the journal Nature, a team of researchers led by Daniel Rokhsar of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI), report the draft genome sequence of the sea sponge Amphimedon queenslandica and several insights the genome gives into the origins of both the first animals and cancer.

All living animals are descended from the common ancestor of sponges and humans, which lived more than 600 million years ago. A sponge-like creature may have been the first organism with more than one cell type and the ability to develop from a fertilized egg produced by the merger of sperm and egg cells – that is, an animal.

"Our hypothesis is that multicellularity and cancer are two sides of the same coin," said Rokhsar, program head for computational genomics at JGI and a professor of molecular and cell biology and of physics at UC Berkeley. "If you are a cell in a multicellular organism, you have to cooperate with other cells in your body, making sure that you divide when you are supposed to as part of the team. The genes that regulate this cooperation are also the ones whose disruption can cause cells to behave selfishly and grow in uncontrolled ways to the detriment of the organism."

As part of the new analysis, the team looked in the sponge genome for more than 100 genes that have been implicated in human cancers and found about 90 percent of them. Future research will show what roles these genes play in endowing sponge cells with team spirit.

Sponges are often described as the "simplest" living animals, while humans are considered relatively "complex," but how this differential complexity is encoded in the genome is still a major question in biology The new study shows that, while the sponge genome contains most of the gene families found in humans, the number of genes in each family has changed significantly over the past 600 million years. By analyzing which gene families were enriched or depleted in different groups of animals, the authors identified groups of gene functions that are associated with morphological complexity.

"The genome raises questions of what it means to be an animal," said first author Mansi Srivastava, a former UC Berkeley graduate student who now is a post-doctoral associate at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. …

"This incredibly old ancestor possessed the same core building blocks for multicellular form and function that still sits at the heart of all living animals, including humans," said coauthor Bernie Degnan, a professor of biology at the University of Queensland, Australia, who collected the sponge whose genome was sequenced from the Great Barrier Reef. "It now appears that the evolution of these genes not only allowed the first animals to colonize the ancient oceans, but underpinned the evolution of the full biodiversity of animals we see today." …

Genome of ancient sponge reveals origins of first animals, cancer

Technorati Tags: genetic engineering

New solar energy conversion process discovered by Stanford engineers could revamp solar power production

2010-08-04T07:00:00.001-07:00

BY LOUIS BERGERON

Stanford engineers have figured out how to simultaneously use the light and heat of the sun to generate electricity in a way that could make solar power production more than twice as efficient as existing methods and potentially cheap enough to compete with oil.

Unlike photovoltaic technology currently used in solar panels – which becomes less efficient as the temperature rises – the new process excels at higher temperatures.

Called "photon enhanced thermionic emission," or PETE, the process promises to surpass the efficiency of existing photovoltaic and thermal conversion technologies.

"This is really a conceptual breakthrough, a new energy conversion process, not just a new material or a slightly different tweak," said Nick Melosh, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who led the research group. "It is actually something fundamentally different about how you can harvest energy."

And the materials needed to build a device to make the process work are cheap and easily available, meaning the power that comes from it will be affordable.

Melosh is senior author of a paper describing the tests the researchers conducted. It was published online Aug. 1 in Nature Materials.

"Just demonstrating that the process worked was a big deal," Melosh said. "And we showed this physical mechanism does exist; it works as advertised." …

"What we've demonstrated is a new physical process that is not based on standard photovoltaic mechanisms, but can give you a photovoltaic-like response at very high temperatures," Melosh said. "In fact, it works better at higher temperatures. The higher the better." …

New solar energy conversion process discovered by Stanford engineers could revamp solar power production

Technorati Tags: solar cell,solar power,solar thermal

Bold rainforest idea makes good: Ecuador secures trust fund to save park from oil developers

2010-08-03T16:11:00.001-07:00

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
August 03, 2010

In what may amount to a historic moment in the quest to save the world's rainforests and mitigate climate change, Ecuador and the United Nations Development Fund (UNDF) have created a trust fund to protect one of the world's most biodiverse rainforests from oil exploration and development. The fund will allow the international community to pay Ecuador to leave an estimated 850 million barrels of oil in Yasuni National Park in the ground instead of extracting it. This first-of-its-kind agreement, known as the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, will allow the rainforest protected area to remain pristine: preserving one of the most species-rich places on Earth, safeguarding the lives of indigenous people, and keeping an estimated 410 million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

"We welcome this long sought after final step to protect an important part of Yasuni National Park," said Kevin Koenig, the Ecuador Coordinator with Amazon Watch. "This is a big win for Ecuador, and the world. Now we need more countries to contribute, and for [Ecuadorian] President Correa to keep his word."

Ecuador is asking for $3.6 US billion from international donors over the next ten years to keep the oil in the ground; the amount is half of what Ecaudor expected to receive if it developed the park. Oil is Ecuador's biggest exporter and the nation's economy remains largely dependent on the fossil fuel. But oil has also brought the nation trouble with pollution, disease, forest destruction, and conflict with indigenous people.

To date, a number of European nations have stepped forward with promises of pledges, although only Germany has put forward a hard number: $838 US million. It has been reported that Spain is likely to put in around a quarter billion, while France, Sweden, and Switzerland are also expected to contribute hefty donations each. In all, approximately half of the $3.6 US billion has already been raised. …

Bold rainforest idea makes good: Ecuador secures trust fund to save park from oil developers

Technorati Tags: Amazon,rainforest,carbon sequestration,carbon dioxide,oil production

‘Wind Lens’ turbines could boost energy generation 3X

2010-08-02T20:55:00.001-07:00

Forget about traditional tri-blade wind turbines — the ultra-efficient turbine of the future might look completely different if Kyushu University professor Yuji Ohya has anything to say about it. Ohya and his team recently unveiled the Wind Lens, a honeycomb-like structure that purportedly triples the amount of wind energy that can be produced by offshore turbines. …

“Wind Lens” Turbines Could Boost Energy Generation 3X

Technorati Tags: wind power,wind turbine

New insights into how stem cells determine what tissue to become

2010-08-02T19:46:00.001-07:00

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Within 24 hours of culturing adult human stem cells on a new type of matrix, University of Michigan researchers were able to make predictions about how the cells would differentiate, or what type of tissue they would become. Their results are published in the Aug. 1 edition of Nature Methods.

Differentiation is the process of stem cells morphing into other types of cells. Understanding it is key to developing future stem cell-based regenerative therapies.

"We show, for the first time, that we can predict stem cell differentiation as early as Day 1," said Jianping Fu, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering who is the first author on the paper.

"Normally, it takes weeks or maybe longer to know how the stem cell will differentiate. Our work could speed up this lengthy process and could have important applications in drug screening and regenerative medicine. Our method could provide early indications of how the stem cells are differentiating and what the cell types they are becoming under a new drug treatment."

In this study, Fu and his colleagues examined stem cell mechanics, the slight forces the cells exert on the materials they are attached to. These traction forces were suspected to be involved in differentiation, but they have not been as widely studied as the chemical triggers. In this paper, the researchers show that the stiffness of the material on which stem cells are cultivated in a lab does, in fact, help to determine what type of cells they turn into.

"Our research confirms that mechanical factors are as important as the chemical factors regulating differentiation," Fu said. "The mechanical aspects have, until now, been largely ignored by stem cell biologists."

The researchers built a novel type of stem cell matrix, or scaffold, whose stiffness can be adjusted without altering its chemical composition, which cannot be done with conventional stem cell growth matrices, Fu said.

The new scaffold resembles an ultrafine carpet of "microposts," hair-like projections made of the elastic polymer polydimethylsiloxane---a key component in Silly Putty, Fu said. By adjusting the height of the microposts, the researchers were able to adjust the rigidity of the matrix.

In this experiment, the engineers used human mesenchymal stem cells, which are found in bone marrow and other connective tissues such as fat. The stem cells differentiated into bone when grown on stiffer scaffolds, and into fat when grown on more flexible scaffolds. …

New insights into how stem cells determine what tissue to become

Technorati Tags: regenerative medicine,stem cells,biotechnology

Study: Could gut germs underlie Western allergies?

2010-08-02T19:35:00.001-07:00

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor; editing by Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON | Mon Aug 2, 2010 3:03pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Germs living in the gut may cause higher rates of allergies, chronic stomach upsets and even obesity among children living in rich industrialized countries, researchers reported on Monday.

They compared intestinal bacteria between European Union children and young villagers in remote Burkina Faso, and found enough differences to help explain disparities in chronic disease and obesity.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may support the development of probiotic products to help restore the ancient balance and keep humans leaner and healthier, the researchers said.

"Our results suggest that diet has a dominant role over other possible variables such as ethnicity, sanitation, hygiene, geography, and climate, in shaping the gut microbiota," Paolo Lionetti of the University of Florence in Italy and colleagues wrote.

"We can hypothesize that the reduction in richness we observe in EU compared with Burkina Faso children, could indicate how the consumption of sugar, animal fat, and calorie-dense foods in industrialized countries is rapidly limiting the adaptive potential of the microbiota."

The study builds on a body of evidence that human health relies heavily on the trillions of microorganisms living in and on our bodies. Only a fraction cause disease directly -- many more help digest food, affect other bacteria and may influence hundreds of biological functions.

Several recent studies have found that certain bacteria cause inflammation that can affect appetite as well as inflammatory bowel conditions like Crohn's disease and colitis, including a study published in Science in March. …

Lionetti's team studied the DNA of the gut bacteria of children in Burkina Faso, who are breast-fed up to age two and eat a diet likely similar to stone-age humans, rich in whole grains such as millet, legumes such as black-eyed peas, and vegetables. They eat very little meat.

The Western diet, in contrast, is heavy in meat, processed grains, sugar and fat.

The Italian team found the African children had many bacteria that help break down fiber, but the European children were lacking these microbes. The ratios were similar to studies comparing the gut bacteria of lean people to obese people. …

Study: Could gut germs underlie Western allergies?

Technorati Tags: nutrition

Avatar’s Na’vi in London to stop Vedanta mine

2010-07-30T16:37:00.001-07:00

Two Na’vi from James Cameron’s film Avatar today paid a visit to British mining company Vedanta Resources’ Annual General Meeting in Westminster, London.

The Na’vi joined tribal rights organization Survival in a demonstration against Vedanta, over its controversial plan to mine the sacred mountain of India’s Dongria Kondh tribe.

Martin Horwood MP, Chair of the all-party parliamentary group for tribal peoples, also attended the AGM, whilst former Monty Python star Michael Palin sent a message of support: ‘I’ve been to the Nyamgiri Hills in Orissa and seen the forces of money and power that Vedanta Resources have arrayed against a people who have occupied their land for thousands of years, who husband the forest sustainably and make no great demands on the state or the government. The tribe I visited simply want to carry on living in the villages that they and their ancestors have always lived in.’

Vedanta’s AGM was the same day that British Prime Minister David Cameron met Indian PM Dr. Manmohan Singh. Martin Horwood MP wrote to David Cameron urging him to raise the issue of the plight of the Dongria Kondh at the meeting.

The Dongria Kondh tribe have been described as ‘the real Avatar tribe’ because their plight closely parallels that of the aliens in James Cameron’s blockbuster.

Vedanta Resources is majority-owned by billionaire Mayfair resident Anil Agarwal. …

Avatar’s Na’vi in London to stop Vedanta mine

Technorati Tags: activism,deforestation

Study demonstrates sexual attraction to those who resemble our parents, ourselves

2010-07-29T08:50:00.001-07:00

July 28, 2010 by Lin Edwards

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers reporting in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin last week say people are drawn to others who resemble their parents or themselves. This may explain why incest taboos are found in many cultures - to counter a natural tendency.

University of Illinois psychologist, Chris Fraley, said there had been a century-long debate on whether incest taboos are psychological or cultural adaptations designed to suppress a biological urge. In the early 20th century Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst, proposed it was psychological, while Edward Westermarck, a sociologist, proposed it was cultural. Westermarck thought there was a critical time in childhood during which people would not find attractive people who were raising them or raised with them.

Most modern researchers think Westermarck was correct, but a new study led by Fraley suggests there may also be a psychological component in which we align ourselves with our kin, who are genetically close to us.

The research involved three experiments. In the first, volunteers were shown pictures of strangers’ faces and asked to rate them on sexual attractiveness. They were unaware that they were also being shown photographs just before the strangers’ faces, and these were flashed so quickly they could only be processed subliminally. Half the volunteers were flashed a picture of their opposite gender parent, while the remaining subjects were flashed a picture of an unrelated person.

The results of this experiment were that those who were exposed to a picture of their parent generally found the stranger's face more sexually attractive than those who were shown the photo of an unrelated person.

A second experiment used images of two faces morphed together. The control group was shown images of faces of strangers morphed together, but the other subjects were shown faces that were composites of a stranger's face and (unknowingly) up to 45% their own face. They then rated the sexual attractiveness of the morph.

In this experiment the subjects shown images containing their own face found the picture more sexually attractive.

…

Study demonstrates sexual attraction to those who resemble our parents, ourselves

Technorati Tags: sexuality

Please support Prof. John Abraham

2010-07-27T09:05:00.001-07:00

You can comment on the following thread to register your support for John Abraham against Monckton’s hysterical demands.

By Gareth on July 15, 2010

Potty peer Christopher Monckton has stepped up his campaign to shut down John Abraham’s debunking of one of his talks last year, by asking supporters to flood Abraham’s university with emails demanding it start a disciplinary inquiry. George Monbiot points out the obvious irony in the Guardian today:

Reading these ravings, I’m struck by two thoughts. The first is how frequently climate change deniers resort to demands for censorship or threats of litigation to try to shut down criticism of their views. Martin Durkin has done it, Richard North has done it, Monckton has done it many times before. They claim to want a debate, but as soon as it turns against them they try to stifle it by intimidating their opponents. To me it suggests that these people can give it out, but they can’t take it.

Monckton has since posted at Watts Up WIth That, including this appeal for support:

May I ask your kind readers once more for their help? Would as many of you as possible do what some of you have already been good enough to do? Please contact Father Dennis J. Dease, President of St. Thomas University, and invite him – even at this eleventh hour – to take down Abraham’s talk altogether from the University’s servers, and to instigate a disciplinary inquiry into the Professor’s unprofessional conduct, particularly in the matter of his lies to third parties about what I had said in my talk at Bethel University eight months ago? That would be a real help. [My emphasis, Dease email removed]

In other words, please help me to bully Abraham and the University into caving in to my absurd demands, and take Abraham’s presentation off the web.

In my view, it’s time to stand up to the potty peer’s attempts at intimidation of Abraham and his University. Rather than flood them with email, I propose that anyone who supports the statement below leave a comment with their name, location and academic affiliation (if any). You will need to leave an email, but that will not be published. I will enforce strict moderation. If you want to support Monckton, go elsewhere. I will ensure that Abraham and the university are aware of the thread. Please leave a comment and encourage as many people as possible to join in. …

Support John Abraham

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

Solar powered bike sharing system proposed for Copenhagen

2010-07-27T08:38:00.001-07:00

Already one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world, Copenhagen is used as the setting for an interesting conceptual bike sharing system. Termed “Bicyclus” by Italian designer Stefano Marchetto, the new eco-friendly plan would reuse some 8,000 bikes that are abandoned every year and further facilitate easier commutes for residents through the city.

The Bicyclus idea intends to upgrade the city’s current world-famous bike system run by Bycykelservice. Since 1995, the city has systematically expanded the number and accessibility of bicycle lanes and routes, making bicycle travel more efficient than using cars or buses.

With Bicyclus, each recycled bike would receive a touchscreen display with information about the city, while the on board computer system would also be equipped to allow Bicyclus bikers to interact. …

A Solar Powered Bike Sharing System

Technorati Tags: transportation,solar power

Modern cargo ships slow to the speed of the sailing clippers

2010-07-26T08:51:00.001-07:00

Container ships are taking longer to cross the oceans than the Cutty Sark did as owners adopt 'super-slow steaming' to cut back on fuel consumption

By John Vidal, The Observer
Sunday 25 July 2010

A combination of the recession and growing awareness in the shipping industry about climate change emissions encouraged many ship owners to adopt "slow steaming" to save fuel two years ago. This lowered speeds from the standard 25 knots to 20 knots, but many major companies have now taken this a stage further by adopting "super-slow steaming" at speeds of 12 knots (about 14mph).

Travel times between the US and China, or between Australia and Europe, are now comparable to those of the great age of sail in the 19th century. American clippers reached 14 to 17 knots in the 1850s, with the fastest recording speeds of 22 knots or more.

Maersk, the world's largest shipping line, with more than 600 ships, has adapted its giant marine diesel engines to travel at super-slow speeds without suffering damage. This reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. It is believed that the company has saved more than £65m on fuel since it began its go-slow.

Ship engines are traditionally profligate and polluting. Designed to run at high speeds, they burn the cheapest "bunker" oil and are not subject to the same air quality rules as cars. In the boom before 2007, the Emma Maersk, one of the world's largest container ships, would burn around 300 tonnes of fuel a day, emitting as much as 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ a day – roughly as much as the 30 lowest emitting countries in the world.

Maersk spokesman Bo Cerup-Simonsen said: "The cost benefits are clear. When speed is reduced by 20%, fuel consumption is reduced by 40% per nautical mile. Slow steaming is here to stay. Its introduction has been the most important factor in reducing our CO₂ emissions in recent years, and we have not yet realised the full potential. Our goal is to reducing CO₂ emissions by 25%." …

Modern cargo ships slow to the speed of the sailing clippers

Technorati Tags: pollution,carbon dioxide,energy efficiency,carbon reduction

Delays, rocketing costs, and financing problems hit international fusion reactor project

2010-07-26T08:38:00.001-07:00

By Eloi Rouyer Eloi Rouyer – Mon Jul 26, 7:09 am ET

MARSEILLE, France (AFP) – An explosion in costs has cast a cloud over a multi-billion-dollar nuclear fusion project aiming to make the power that fuels the Sun a practical energy source on Earth.

Delays, rocketing costs and financing problems have hit the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) whose consortium members start a meeting on Tuesday aiming to get the project back on course.

ITER was set up by the European Union, which has a 45-percent share, China, India, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves by testing nuclear fusion.

Work is to start at the test reactor site at Cadarache in southern France next month, but the cost now worries many members.

The total estimated bill for the EU, the main backer, has doubled to 7.2 billion euros (9.2 billion dollars), with the overall cost now reckoned to be around 15 billion euros.

The meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Cadarche of ITER's council members marks the start of the construction phase and comes after the EU pledged to pump in extra funds to keep the project going.

The European Commission, the EU executive arm, this month offered to fork out an extra 1.4 billion euros to fulfil Europe's commitment to the project, but this needs the approval of EU member states.

ITER's administrative headquarters and two buildings housing equipment will be the first to be started. …

Nuclear experts seek to advance fusion project

Technorati Tags: fusion

The White House lamely blames environmentalists for climate bill failure

2010-07-24T10:27:00.001-07:00

By Joe Romm

The blame game has already begun.

One exasperated administration official on Thursday lambasted the environmentalists – led by the Environmental Defense Fund – for failing to effectively lobby GOP senators.

“They didn’t deliver a single Republican,” the official told POLITICO. “They spent like $100 million and they weren’t able to get a single Republican convert on the bill.”

No doubt that is a quote from somebody in the Rahm and Axelrod camp.

But while I certainly think that enviros made mistakes — see Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming? — I agree with CAP’s Dan Weiss who told Climate Progress today:

In my 30 years of environmental advocacy, this has been the most sophisticated, political savvy, vigorous legislative campaign. The Environmental Defense Fund undertook heroic efforts to convince reluctant senators of both parties to support investments in clean energy jobs, reduce oil use, and cut pollution.

The inability to achieve support from Republican senators was due to their feality to their leadership, big oil, and dirty coal, and not for lack of effort. Senators of both parties who supported global warming legislation in previous Congresses should be ashamed that they were AWOL in 2010.

I would go further.

It is absurd to think that environmentalists could deliver Republicans — the GOBP doesn’t count environmentalists among their constituents. Maybe they could have delivered the Maine Senators, but Cantwell give Collins an out. Snowe remains a puzzle. …

On the political front, the White House deserves most of the blame for not getting Republicans. Why? Because the White House never tried to keep moderate Democrats in line, never made it clear that there was definitely gonna be a vote on this bill and the moderates should figure out what they needed to support the bill (as in the case of healthcare reform). …

The White House lamely blames environmentalists for climate bill failure

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

Will ‘solar trees’ sprout in parking lots?

2010-07-23T08:47:00.001-07:00

By MATTHEW L. WALD
July 14, 2010, 7:27 am

Part of the fine print in solar power systems is that whatever wattage number is quoted, it is usually “peak watts,’’ or the amount of electricity that the panel would deliver when the sun is directly overhead. For the rest of the daylight hours, the output is lower; a graph showing minute-by-minute production resembles a sharp mountain peak.

One way to do better is to mount the panel on a metal backbone and let it tilt over the course of the day, keeping itself pointed towards the sun from sunrise to sunset. This is called a single-axis tracker. Better yet is a two-axis tracker, which also adjusts the angle to compensate for how high the sun is in the sky. Then the graph showing output would resemble a plateau. But all of this adds cost.

Envision Solar, a San Diego company, has found a niche in the solar world by building shaded parking areas with solar panels fixed to the roofs. The panels do not track the sun, but they are angled to take advantage of it: they are usually tilted to the south.

But parking lot designers seldom take solar orientation into account when painting the stripes for the parking spaces; the company has sometimes had to realign the parking stalls so that the roofs will have good solar orientation, with the rows of cars running east-west. In the ideal configuration, said Robert Noble, an architect who founded the firm and is its chief executive, the sun rises in the windshield and sets in the back window, or vice versa.

Now Envision is trying out another idea. On Wednesday, it will announce that with financing from the state of Pennsylvania, it is trying out a “solar tree” mounted on a gimbal, a mechanical device with rings mounted on axes at right angles to each other. …

Will ‘Solar Trees’ Sprout in Parking Lots?

Technorati Tags: solar power,alternative energy,photovoltaic

Google officially enters the energy market

2010-07-22T08:38:00.001-07:00

By Ariel Schwartz
Tue Jul 20, 2010

Google's entrance into the energy market has been a long time coming. Earlier this year, the Internet giant formed an energy subsidiary, dubbed "Google Energy", and soon afterwards Google announced that its first direct investment in utility-scale clean energy would go towards NextEra Energy Resources' wind energy project in North Dakota to the tune of $38.8 million. Now Google reports that it has entered into a 20-year green Power Purchase Agreement with NextEra--and Google plans to sell some of that wind power back to the grid for Renewable Energy Certificates. In other words, Google-owned resources may soon be keeping your lights on.

Beginning on July 30, NextEra will supply Google with 114 megawatts of wind generation from the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa. Google will continue to buy the energy from NextEra at an undisclosed rate for the next 20 years. But according to Google, the deal is a bit complicated: …

Google Officially Enters the Energy Market

Technorati Tags: alternative energy,wind power,solar power

Remembering Stephen Schneider

2010-07-19T15:07:00.001-07:00

By Joe Romm
July 19, 2010

Prof. Stephen Schneider, one of the truly important voices in climate science of our time, has died. For over three decades, he had been researching and speaking out on the need to sharply and quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Schneider served as a consultant to Federal Agencies and White House staff in the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations…..

Schneider was the founder and editor of the journal Climatic Change and authored or co-authored over 450 scientific papers and other publications. He was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group II IPCC TAR and was engaged as a co-anchor of the Key Vulnerabilities Cross-Cutting Theme for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) at the time of his death.

Schneider managed this urgent message even while consistently focusing on the uncertainties inherent in the science — he understood that the uncertainties made the case stronger, not weaker, particularly since most of the uncertainty is on the high end of climate sensitivity and impacts. And he managed this even while he battled and beat a rare cancer.” …

Remembering Stephen Schneider

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

Surprisingly regular patterns in hurricane energy discovered

2010-07-12T21:42:00.001-07:00

Researchers at Mathematics Research Centre and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have discovered the mathematical relation between the number of hurricanes produced in certain parts of the planet and the energy they release. The distribution is valid for all series of hurricanes under study, independent of when and where they occurred. The research, which will be published on Sunday online edition of Nature Physics, suggests that the evolution of hurricane intensity will be very difficult to predict.

It is well known that there are less probabilities of a devastating hurricane developing than of a modest one. However, the exact relation between the number of hurricanes and energy released was not known until now. Researchers from the Mathematics Research Centre (CRM) and the Department of Physics of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have analysed data corresponding to tropical cyclones (generic name used for hurricanes) which have appeared in different parts of the planet between 1945 and 2007. Scientists have discovered that this relation corresponds to a power-law, a precise mathematical formula cyclones obey in a surprising manner, regardless of where on the planet and when they appear.

This fundamental discovery has led researchers to more general conclusions on the behaviour of hurricanes. The first conclusion states that a hurricane's dynamics can be the result of a critical process, therefore making it impossible to predict its intensity. One of the aspects traditionally studied by organisations monitoring the danger of hurricanes is the prediction of their intensity, since this determines which alert and prevention systems are to be used in populated areas. Despite the efforts of scientists and resources invested, until now results have been very poor, although predictions on hurricane trajectory have improved considerably. The fact that hurricanes follow this power-law, as do other natural phenomena where large amounts of energy are released, e.g. earthquakes, questions the ability to predict the evolution of their intensity. In these types of processes, the dynamics behind large hurricanes are the same as those producing tropical storms of less importance and range. The way in which a small storm evolves and transforms into a catastrophic hurricane depends on whether the fluctuations amplifying the storm are stronger than those which tend to dissipate it. However, there is no specific aspect pointing to which will be the dominant fluctuations, since the system at that moment is in a critical situation, i.e. on the verge of either dissipating or growing. …

The research, which will be published on Monday in the online edition of Nature Physics, was carried out by Álvaro Corral, researcher at Mathematics Research Centre (consortium formed by the Institute of Catalan Studies and the Catalan Government, located at the UAB Research Park; CRM is also a CERCA center); Albert Ossó, UAB student in Physics; and Dr Josep Enric Llebot, professor at the UAB Department of Physics.

Surprisingly regular patterns in hurricane energy discovered

Technorati Tags: hurricane,chaos,fractal

Monday, July 12: Ocean acidification findings for Puget Sound to be announced

2010-07-09T09:02:00.001-07:00

WHAT: Learn where Puget Sound waters have particularly low pH values compared to what is normal for ocean waters and what proportion is probably the result of man-made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. View a buoy and sleek University of Washington-built Seaglider on board the ship that is about to deploy them off the Washington coast. They will be used to monitor ocean water, destined to end up in Puget Sound, for such things as acidification.

SPEAKERS: Oceanographers with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

WHEN: 10 a.m. Monday, July 12

WHERE: Applied Physics Laboratory dock, Eastlake Avenue East, under the University Bridge

DETAILS: NOAA and UW scientists will announce findings that are about to be published about acidification in Puget Sound and the outlook for the Sound’s waters if carbon dioxide continues building in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide gas dissolving in seawater lowers the pH and makes it more difficult for organisms to get the substances they need to build their skeletons and shells. Scientists are working to determine the effects on everything from single-celled organisms to oysters, mussels and crabs. To learn more, the most sophisticated array of instruments ever put in Washington waters will be deployed on a buoy and Seaglider off the coast near La Push, Wash., in water that typically makes its way into Puget Sound. The instruments also will keep tabs on ocean and atmospheric conditions that can lead to toxic algae outbreaks along the coast as well as low-oxygen waters, like those that have plagued Hood Canal in recent years.

Researchers will also discuss:

How carbon dioxide sensors on the Space Needle since spring are helping citizen scientists learn about emissions.

How local conservation groups, government and university scientists, those who fish for a living, shellfish aquaculturists and Native Americans have come together to support a comprehensive ocean acidification research and monitoring program in Puget Sound.

Sandra Hines, Vince Stricherz. University of Washington News, 8 July 2010.

Media advisory: Ocean acidification findings for Puget Sound to be announced via Ocean Acidification

Technorati Tags: ocean acidification

European Parliament approves illegal timber ban

2010-07-07T19:02:00.001-07:00

James Murray, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 7 July 2010 at 13:22:00

MEPs vote 644-25 in favour of legislation blocking the import and sale of illegally logged timber

Green groups celebrated today after the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation banning the import and sale of timber obtained through illegal logging.

The parliament voted 644-25 in favour of the legislation, paving the way for the rules to come into effect from 2012.

The regulations still need to be rubber stamped by the European Council of member states, although the final approval is expected to be a formality after the council signalled last month that it would support the legislation.

The new rules will close a loophole that has made it possible for European firms to import and sell timber that has been logged illegally in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

According to WWF, the trade is worth up to £700m a year, with up to a fifth of timber imported into the EU alleged to come from illegal sources.

Under the new regulations, all companies importing and selling timber in the EU will be required to demonstrate that they have exercised adequate due diligence to ensure their timber has been felled legally.

European environment commissioner Janez Potocnik welcomed the passage of the legislation, arguing that the regulations marked a significant step towards tackling illegal logging.

"Combating illegal logging will bring environmental and development benefits, " he said. "With this, we are sending a signal to the world that the EU will no longer serve as a market for illegally harvested timber." …

European Parliament approves illegal timber ban

Technorati Tags: deforestation,rainforest,Europe

‘Climategate’ review clears scientists of dishonesty over data -- ‘Their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt’

2010-07-07T07:22:00.001-07:00

By David Adam, environment correspondent
www.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 July 2010 13.02 BS

The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm were today cleared of accusations that they fudged their results and silenced critics to bolster the case for man-made global warming.

Sir Muir Russell, the senior civil servant who led a six-month inquiry into the affair, said the "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the world-leading Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are not in doubt. They did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, the panel found, while key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.

The panel did criticise the scientists for not being open enough about their work, and said they were "unhelpful and defensive" when responding to legitimate requests made under freedom of information (FOI) laws.

The row was sparked when 13 years of emails from CRU scientists were hacked and released online last year. Climate change sceptics claimed they showed scientists manipulating and suppressing data to back up a theory of man-made climate change. Critics also alleged that the scientists abused their positions to cover up flaws and distort the peer review process that determines which studies are published in journals, and so enter the scientific record. Some alleged that the emails cast doubt on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Announcing the findings, Russell said: "Ultimately this has to be about what they did, not what they said."

He added: "The honesty and rigour of CRU as scientists are not in doubt ... We have not found any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments." …

‘Climategate’ review clears scientists of dishonesty over data

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

UPS goes global with carbon-neutral shipping

2010-07-06T20:28:00.001-07:00

BusinessGreen.com staff, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 7 July 2010 at 00:15:00

Carbon offsetting service to be extended to 35 countries and territories from next week

Logistics and delivery giant UPS yesterday announced that it has expanded its carbon-neutral shipping programme to 35 countries and territories across Europe, Asia and the Americas, allowing its customers to pay a small premium to calculate and offset the carbon emissions associated with their shipments.

The move follows the launch late last year of the company's US carbon offsetting programme, which offered customers the chance to pay fees ranging from $0.05 (£0.03) to $0.75 per package to offset carbon emissions associated with the delivery.

The company said that the new global service will come into effect from the start of next week and will provide business customers with the option of choosing to offset emissions from individual packages or agreeing a contract that will see them offset all emissions arising from UPS shipments.

Initially UPS will continue to purchase carbon offsets from the Garcia River Forest Climate Action Project in the US, but the company said it would now seek to extend its offset purchases to other independently approved projects around the world. …

UPS goes global with carbon-neutral shipping

Technorati Tags: carbon market,carbon offset,global warming,climate change

Dutch review backs UN climate panel report

2010-07-05T09:37:00.001-07:00

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News
Page last updated at 12:23 GMT, Monday, 5 July 2010 13:23 UK

A Dutch inquiry into the UN's climate science panel has found "no errors that would undermine the main conclusions" on probable impacts of climate change.

However, it says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be more transparent in its workings.

The Dutch parliament asked for the inquiry after two mistakes were identified in the IPCC's 2007 report.

The inquiry is the latest in a series that have largely backed "mainstream" climate science against detractors.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) does not give the panel a completely clean bill of health, however.

Whereas the IPCC's landmark Fourth Assessment (AR4) from 2007 "conclusively shows" that impacts of human-induced climate change are already tangible in many places around the world and will become more serious as temperatures increase, PBL also says the foundation for some of the specific projections "could have been made more transparent".

The Netherlands inquiry adds that the IPCC's summaries tended to emphasise "worst-case scenarios".

However, this was disputed by scientists who had played a leading role in AR4.

"The net impacts of climate change are not beneficial," said David Vaughan, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey, who coordinated the AR4 chapter on polar impacts.

Martin Parry, visiting professor at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change Research at Imperial College London who co-chaired AR4 Working Group 2 on climate impacts, welcomed the PBL report.

"We welcome the conclusion of this report, which is essentially that our conclusions are safe, sound and reliable," he said.

"The IPCC is about to venture into the next assessment; so it's important that we learn from these issues, and it's important not to be defensive, and I think that's how the IPCC is approaching things now." …

Dutch review backs UN climate panel report

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,United Nations

The microwave sky as seen by Planck space observatory

2010-07-05T09:02:00.001-07:00

Date: 05 Jul 2010
Satellite: Planck
Depicts: First year all-sky survey map
Copyright: ESA, HFI and LFI consortia

This multi-colour all-sky image of the microwave sky has been synthesized using data spanning the full frequency range of Planck, which covers the electromagnetic spectrum from 30 to 857 GHz.

The grainy structure of the CMB, with its tiny temperature fluctuations reflecting the primordial density variations from which the cosmic web originated, is clearly visible in the high-latitude regions of the map, where the foreground contribution is not predominant.

A vast portion of the sky, extending well above and below the galactic plane, is dominated by the diffuse emission from gas and dust in the Milky Way, which shines brightly at Planck's frequencies. While the galactic foreground hides the CMB signal from our view, it also highlights the extent of our Galaxy's large-scale structure and its emission properties.

Although the two main components of the microwave sky appear to be separable only in certain areas, an optimal foreground removal over the entire sky is possible thanks to sophisticated image analysis techniques, which have been developed by the Planck scientific teams. These techniques rely on the observatory's unique frequency coverage and the unprecedented accuracy of its measurements.

This image is derived from data collected by Planck during its first all-sky survey, and covers about 12 months of observations.

Note: Because of the manner in which all the channels have been combined to produce this image, the colours no longer represent accurately the brightness at each frequency. The angular resolution of this image has been reduced by a factor of around three from its sharpest rendition, to better match it to a typical viewing screen. For these and other reasons, this image is not suitable for scientific analysis.

The microwave sky as seen by Planck

Technorati Tags: space exploration,cosmology