Nanotube technology transforms CO2 into fuel

Presence of surplus carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has taken center stage in the environmental science. All over the world people are worried about the excess amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because it’s causing undesirable changes in the surroundings such as green house effect, global warming, melting of ice caps on the glaciers etc. So most of the environmental scientists are trying to minimize the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University are working towards the same goal with the help of sunlight and titanium oxide nanotubes. These two elements, sunlight and titanium oxide nanotubes can transform carbon dioxide into methane. Methane can be utilized as energy source. It seems like double benefit. At one hand, we are reducing the quantity of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and we would be less dependent on fossil fuels.

Craig Grimes of Pennsylvania State University is working on this project with Oomman Varghese, Maggie Paulose and Thomas LaTempa. Craig Grimes shares his views, “Right now there is lots of talk about burying carbon dioxide, which is ridiculous. Instead we can collect the waste out of the smoke stack, put it though a converter, and presto, use sunlight to change [CO2] back into fuel.”

The team of researchers arranged the nanotubes vertically somewhat on the lines of empty honeycomb. The top of the nanotubes is covered with a thin, reddish-brown layer of copper oxide. Here the copper and titanium oxide operate as catalysts. They increase the pace of chemical reactions that happen naturally. …

Nanotube Technology Transforms CO2 Into Fuel

Technorati Tags: nanotechnology,alternative energy,carbon dioxide

Surge of college students pursuing 'clean energy' careers

Climate change is a concern among undergraduates, driving a surge of interest in science and engineering on campuses nationwide.

By Jim Tankersley

Reporting from Washington -- In what could be an encouraging sign of change in the long-standing shortage of Americans preparing for "clean energy" careers, the subject is suddenly hot on college campuses across the nation -- a surge of interest largely stimulated by the specter of global warming.

Concern about climate change is galvanizing more undergraduate students to turn toward a subject involving science and engineering, some educators suggest, in much the same way that Moscow's launching of the Sputnik space satellite jolted baby boomers to turn their eyes to the stars.

What remains uncertain is whether their enthusiasm for renewable energy will carry over into graduate school and lead them to swell the ranks of Americans with advanced science and engineering degrees.

"We have a shortfall of people to do cutting-edge research and do the innovations we need," said Vijay K. Dhir, dean of the engineering school at UCLA. But, he added, "the potential is there."

The rising interest in renewable energy is so new that it's not clearly reflected in the latest enrollment figures, educators say. But leaders from a range of schools -- including Arizona State University, Indiana University and the University of Colorado -- say energy and sustainability are the hottest topic for their students. …

Surge of college students pursuing 'clean energy' careers

Technorati Tags: renewable energy,climate change

Worst culprits from nine states contributing to Gulf of Mexico dead zone mapped by USGS

 

TreeHugger has covered the issue of ocean dead zones, in particular the annual 8,000 square mile one in the Gulf of Mexico, a number of times.

Now, the US Geological Survey has released new maps which pinpoint the watersheds within the Mississippi River Basin which most contribute to the problem:

The short version is that commercial fertilizer and animal manure in nine states—Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi—causes 70% of the problem. But when you look at the maps the USGS has put out you can see that it's a bit more complicated than that. Those bright red areas show areas with the greatest contribution; it's really specific places within these states. …

Worst Culprits From Nine States Contributing to Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Mapped by USGS

Technorati Tags: dead zone

Development of Google Earth a watershed moment for the environment

Satellites have long been used to detect and monitor environmental change, but capabilities have vastly improved since the early 1970s when Landsat images were first revealed to the public.

Today Google Earth has democratized the availability of satellite imagery, putting high resolution images of the planet within reach of anyone with access to the Internet.

In the process, Google Earth has emerged as potent tool for conservation, allowing scientists, activists, and even the general public to create compelling presentations that reach and engage the masses. One of the more prolific developers of Google Earth conservation applications is David Tryse. Neither a scientist nor a formal conservationist, Tryse's concern for the welfare of the planet led him develop a KML for the Zoological Society of London's EDGE of Existence program, an initiative to promote awareness of and generating conservation funding for 100 of the world's rarest species.

The KML allows people to surf the planet to see photos of endangered species, information about their habitat, and the threats they face. Tryse has since developed a deforestation tracking application, a KML that highlights hydroelectric threats to Borneo’s rivers, and oil spills and is working on a new tool that will make it even easier for people to create visualizations on Google Earth. Tryse believes the development of Google Earth is a watershed moment for conservation and the environmental movement. …

Development of Google Earth a watershed moment for the environment

Technorati Tags: green computing

Building industry outlines vision for green roofs and "living walls"

James Murray, BusinessGreen, Tuesday 31 March 2009 at 00:00:00

New report praises efforts of London's Westfield shopping centre and highlights how building techniques can promote flora and fauna while boosting the economy

London's giant Westfield shopping centre will be praised today for utilising an emerging green building trend designed to improve biodiversity in our towns and cities....

Building industry outlines vision for green roofs and "living walls"

Technorati Tags: green construction

Climate change in Florida

BY GEORGIA TASKER
gtasker@MiamiHerald.com

Maybe the fish are on to something. Don Hammond, who catches, tags and releases dolphin-fish (also known as mahi-mahi), says those Florida natives are being hooked in some unusual places.

Like Massachusetts and Canada.

People who study South Florida's environment say global warming is starting to have a significant impact on Florida's fish, fowl and flora.

Among those beginning to see the signs is Hammond, a private researcher in Charleston, S.C., who retired after 35 years with that state's Department of Natural Resources. He now runs a company called Cooperative Sciences Services. His fish, tagged in waters between South Florida and North Carolina, appear to be migrating farther north. Last year, one in five were hooked anew between North Carolina and Massachusetts, and one swam its way to the waters off of Nova Scotia.

''I have to wonder that as northern waters are warming and tropical waters are getting hotter, will the [fish] populations shift north?'' he said. …

CHANGES IN FLORIDA

Of course, there is scientific data and there are conditions that can be readily observed, especially in environmentally sensitive places like the Keys. Here are some of the changes that have been observed:

• Sooty terns and brown noddies (dark-colored terns) are nesting earlier in the Dry Tortugas.

• Buttonwoods and pines are dying as saltwater rises and does not drain away after hurricane storm surges.

• Salt-loving mangroves and saltwater habitats are advancing inland.

• Scientists had to lure beach-nesting roseate terns to a new beach three years ago after Pelican Shoals in the Keys was washed over and left under water by Hurricane Wilma.

• Half the corals in the Keys have been killed by disease, hurricanes and bleaching in hot water; those remaining are vulnerable to ocean acidification.

• Nine species of dragonflies have moved into Florida from Cuba and the Bahamas, following similar migrations by butterflies, birds and mammals. …

Ample evidence Florida's feeling effects of climate change

Technorati Tags: climate change

Obama calls major economies climate change meeting

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama is launching a "Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate" to help facilitate a U.N. agreement on global warming, the White House said on Saturday.

Leaders from 16 major economies have been invited to a preparatory session on April 27 and 28 in Washington to "help generate the political leadership necessary" to achieve an international pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions later this year, it said in a statement.

It said the meeting would spur dialogue among developed and developing countries about the issue, "and advance the exploration of concrete initiatives and joint ventures that increase the supply of clean energy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions."

The major economies include: Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

…

Obama calls major economies climate change meeting

Technorati Tags: Obama,climate change

NYT’s Tom Friedman updates the global warming threat and spells out the solution

The NYT columnist Tom Friedman has another terrific global warming piece today, “Mother Nature’s Dow.” He is the only major national columnist or reporter consistently warning the public of what science now tells us is likely result of continuing on our current greenhouse gas emissions path — unmitigated unconscionable catastrophe. And he is the only one laying out the solution in detail. In this post I will endeavor to annotate his column for new and old readers who want more.

Friedman begins by noting, “I’m convinced that our current financial crisis is the product of both The Market and Mother Nature hitting the wall at once.” This piece is in some sense a sequel to his one from three weeks ago, see “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?” He then lays out the climate realist position, noting:

If you follow climate science, what has been striking is how insistently some of the world’s best scientists have been warning — in just the past few months — that climate change is happening faster and will bring bigger changes quicker than we anticipated just a few years ago.

He cites two scientific sources:

• Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, whose extended views can be seen here.
• M.I.T.’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, whose full analysis can be seen here: M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C.

For more sources on this climate realist position, see “An introduction to global warming impacts.”

Then he lays out the five key policies needed to avert this catastrophe, the “climate bailout.” He cites Hal Harvey, CEO of “a new $1 billion foundation, ClimateWorks, set up to accelerate the policy changes that can avoid climate catastrophe by taking climate policies from where they are working the best to the places where they are needed the most”:

(more…)

NYT’s Tom Friedman updates the global warming threat and spells out the solution

Technorati Tags: global warming

Dear deniers and cranks: Earth Hour made a difference

 

 BlogTO

To all those deniers, cranks, wingnuts and spoilsports who said they were going to turn on their lights, that the generators have to keep running anyways, and that Earth Hour will make no difference, suck on this:

1) Gas and coal fired plants dial up and down all the time to adjust for peak load, so an event like Earth Hour is actually turning down the dirtiest fossil fuel burners, taking it right off the top.

2) In the City of Toronto where I live, to paraphrase a local site, power consumption looked like the Dow Jones Industrial Index, dropping 15%.

Save the comments about the CO2 from candles, we know.

Dear Deniers and Cranks: Earth Hour Made a Difference

Technorati Tags: climate change,energy efficiency,activism

Flying around the ISS - sped up

So cool.

Flying Around the ISS - Sped Up

Technorati Tags: space exploration

Algae biofuels: the hype, the hope, the promise

The Algae Biofuels World Summit concluded this week in San Francisco. I was on-hand and on assignment for Triple Pundit Monday at the day long pre-conference briefing featuring leaders in research, government, and business involved in pushing the infant industry toward commercial-scale production.

It was a sobering day for me, as it became clear that much of what is bandied about on blogs and in the mainstream media (to the extent algal biofuel research gets any coverage in the mainstream media) is wild-eyed optimism and pure hype. No, you can not produce 15,000 gallons of algae biofuel per acre per year; no, algae biofuel will not replace oil all by itself - and the list goes on.

The plain reality is that producing algae biofuel at a commercial scale is not a given, it will not be cheap or easy, and a lot more R&D needs to be done before any real hope of algae biofuel being more than an experimental or "boutique" fuel is realized. …

Algae Biofuels - The Hype, the Hope, the Promise

Technorati Tags: algae,biofuel

Study: New industries ‘extravagant’ energy users

Rather than use energy more efficiently than traditional industries, newer types of manufacturing processes — solar panel production, for example — are outrageously energy-inefficient, according to a new analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Timothy Gutowski of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering led the analysis, which examined the materials and energy consumption of 20 different manufacturing processes.

“The seemingly extravagant use of materials and energy resources by many newer manufacturing processes is alarming and needs to be addressed alongside claims of improved sustainability from products manufactured by these means,” Gutowski and his team write in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. …

Study: New industries ‘extravagant’ energy users

Technorati Tags: alternative energy,energy efficiency

Food and water production will be next for green tech innovations

Photo via iLoveButter

Forget clean energy for a moment. If climate change alters the earth's ecosystems and rainfall levels to the point that we can't rely on usual methods or locations for water and food supplies, then that means food and water production will need to be the focus of clean tech. Nicholas Parker of the Cleantech Group argues this point in a presentation given yesterday at the Entrepreneurial Energy Expo at Babson College. ...

Food and Water Production Will Be Next for Green Tech Innovations

Technorati Tags: freshwater depletion,climate change,agriculture

And Obama gives the best clean energy and global warming solutions job to …

Cathy Zoi, CEO of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, has been nominated by President Obama to serve as Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) under Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Zoi has a unique combination of expertise in clean energy and high level federal government experience — she was Chief of Staff in the Clinton White House Office on Environmental Policy, managing the staff working on environmental and energy issues (full bio here, recent writing below). Since I have known Zoi for nearly 2 decades and since in 1997 I held the job she is now nominated for, I can personally attest she will be able to hit the ground running in the crucial job of overseeing the vast majority of the development and deployment of plausible climate solutions technology.

What does EERE do? You could spend hours on their website, here, exploring everything they are into. Of the 12 to 14 most plausible wedges the world needs to stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm — the full global warming solution — EERE is the principal federal agency for working with businesses to develop and deploy the technology for 11 of them!

The stimulus and the 2009 budget dramatically increases — more than doubles — EERE funding for technology development and deployment. Zoi’s most important job is deployment, deployment, deployment. And again she is a uniquely qualified to get clean energy into the marketplace. Zoi was a manager at the US Environmental Protection Agency where “she pioneered the Energy Star Program,” which was the pioneering energy efficiency deployment program launched in the early 1990s.

So we know Zoi gets energy efficiency. Here’s what she wrote last year about “Embracing the Challenge to Repower America“:

(more…)

And Obama gives the best clean energy and global warming solutions job to …

Technorati Tags: Obama,renewable energy

MIT Professor: Power your house with 5 liters of water per day

 

At the Aspen Environment Forum today, MIT professor Dan Nocera gave a revolutionary picture of the new energy economy with an assertion that our homes will be our power plants and our fuel stations, powered by sunlight and water. And it’s not science fiction.

Nocera stated that even if we put all available acreage into fuel crops, all available acreage in wind power, and build a new nuclear power plant every 1.5 days, and we save 100% of our current energy use (yes, you read that correctly), we will still come up short by 2050. His estimate is that we will need 16 TW of energy production by then, and with our current methods, we won’t get there.

But there is a solution. And we don’t need to invent anything new to get from here to there.

Nocera said that MIT will announce its patent next week of a cheap, efficient, manufacturable electrolyzer made from cobalt and potassium phosphate. This technology, powered by a 6 meter by 5 meter photovoltaic array on the roof, is capable of powering an entire house’s power needs plus a fuel cell good for 500 km of travel, with just 5 liters of water. …

MIT Professor: Power Your House With 5 Liters of Water Per Day

Technorati Tags: solar power,hydrogen energy

The affordable LEED Platinum Habitat for Humanity house

This classic American home is the end result of smart planning, high performance materials, and passive design techniques.  Designed on a $100,000 dollar budget by the Michigan firm of Dominick Tringali Architects, the project is set to be a prototype for the next generation of Habitat for Humanity homes.  Lets take a closer look. …

The Affordable LEED Platinum Habitat for Humanity House

Technorati Tags: green construction

How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution

In this post I will lay out “the solution” to global warming, focusing primarily on the 12 to 14 “stabilization wedges.” This post is an update to “Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible? Part 2: The Solution.”

I have argued that stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or lower is not politically possible today, but that it is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective (see Part 1). I do, however, believe humanity will do it since the alternative is Hell and High Water.

It would require some 12-14 of Princeton’s “stabilization wedges” — strategies and/or technologies that over a period of a few decades each reduce global carbon emissions by one billion metric tons per year from projected levels (see technical paper here, less technical one here). The reason that we need twice as many wedges as Princeton’s Pacala and Socolow have said we need was explained in Part 1. That my analysis is largely correct can be seen here: “IEA report, Part 2: Climate Progress has the 450-ppm solution about right.”

I agree with the IPCC’s detailed review of the technical literature, which concluded in 2007 that “The range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialised in coming decades.” The technologies they say can beat 450 ppm are here. Technology Review, one of the nation’s leading technology magazines, also argued in a cover story two years ago, “It’s Not Too Late,” that “Catastrophic climate change is not inevitable. We possess the technologies that could forestall global warming.”

I also agree with McKinsey Global Institute’s 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero. …

How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated)

Technorati Tags: global warming