-
maribo: Is climate science strong enough for the courts?
Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University, said a breakthrough that allows scientists to judge the role man-made climate change played in extreme weather events could see a rush to the courts over the next decade. He said: “We are starting to get to the point that when an adverse weather event occurs we can quantify how much more likely it was made by human activity. And people adversely affected by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify their losses. This is going to be hugely important.”
tags: climate change, risk, courts
-
Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst of global warming | Environment | The Guardian
The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as Kevin Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world. So much extra pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of the climate targets debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and “dangerously misguided” at worst.
In the jargon used to count the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s thin layer of atmosphere, he said it was “improbable” that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm).
tags: co2, co2 emissions, carbon dioxide, 450ppm, 350ppm, 650ppm, ipcc
-
Global Temperature Increase on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
This time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 to 2008.
Taken from the UK’s Climate Research Unit (see www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/).
tags: climate research unit, climate change, global warming, chart
-
Banking on carbon assets - The McKinsey Quarterly - Banking on carbon assets - Strategy - Strategy in Practice
For the foreseeable future, the global financial-services sector will be wrestling with the grim realities of credit losses, deleveraging, and challenges to traditional business models. With dramatic industry restructuring already underway and a clear need for players to concentrate on the here and now, it would be easy to lose sight of a nascent but significant long-term opportunity: facilitating carbon trading.
tags: carbon trading, carbon, banks
Posted from here.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
-
The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat | Environment | The Observer
As the west’s appetite for meat increases, so too does the demand for soya - used as animal feed by farmers. But the planting of huge tracts of land is causing deforestation and destroying eco-systems in developing countries.
tags: soya, deforestation, paraguay, sustainable farming
-
Energy Outlook
Ever since last week’s announcement of a deal to roll out Project Better Place’s model for recharging electric cars in Hawaii, I’ve been curious about how it would work out, if the supplies of new renewable electricity needed to wean the Islands’ million or so cars and light trucks off of oil were not forthcoming, or at least didn’t materialize as quickly as the company and state hope. If I’ve done my sums right this morning, it appears that electrifying Hawaii’s passenger cars would still save large quantities of oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, even if every kilowatt-hour (kWh) to run them was generated from the state’s oil-fired power plants.
tags: better place, ev, phev, electric vehicle, hawaii
-
America’s Addiction Fuels Desire For Coffee Ground Biodiesel : Gas 2.0
Researchers are reporting they have successfully made a high quality biodiesel from spent coffee grounds. They estimate that the coffee ground biodiesel industry could generate as much as $8,000,000 in profits annually using waste from US Starbucks stores alone.
tags: biodiesel, biofuel
-
Arctic will have first ice-free summer in 2015: Researcher
The ice that has covered the Arctic basin for a million years will be gone in little more than six years because of global warming, a University of Manitoba geoscientist said.
tags: ice, arctic thaw, arctic ice
-
Climate change: Sci-fi solutions no longer in the margins
With political efforts to tackle global warming advancing slower than a Greenland glacier, schemes for saving Earth’s climate system that once were dismissed as crazy or dangerous are gaining in status.
Negotiating a multilateral treaty on curbing greenhouse gases is being so outstripped by the scale of the problem that those promoting a deus ex-machina — a technical fix that would at least gain time — are getting a serious hearing.
To the outsider, these ideas to manipulate the climate may look as if they are inspired by science fiction.
tags: geo-engineering, climate change
-
The Energy Roadmap - MIT announces breakthrough in fusion, but Holy Grail of energy ’still decades away’
Research on nuclear fusion continues apace…
MIT researchers are keeping hope alive in the long quest for fusion energy. Researchers have advanced our ability to harnesses one of the most complicated forms of energy science in the universe, but add a word of caution that real scalable reactors could still be ‘decades away’ as all eyes now focus on the ITER in France.
tags: fusion, nuclear fusion, nuclear power
-
Defense Tech Briefs - Silicon Nanowires for Anodes of Rechargeable Li Power Cells
Battery technologies are improving every day!
Charge capacities could be increased substantially over those of carbon-based anodes.
Silicon nanowires have been investigated as alternatives to the graphite heretofore widely used as an anode material in rechargeable lithium-ion power cells. The theoretical specific charge capacity of graphite, corresponding to the maximum Li content (at a composition of LiC6) is 372 mA•hr/g. In contrast, the theoretical specific charge capacity of Si corresponding to the maximum Li content (at a composition of Li4.4Si) is much greater — 4.2 A•hr/g.
tags: lithium, lithium ion, nanowires
-
IEEE Spectrum: The Price Is Wrong for Oil Shale and Tar Sand Tech
Looks like oil isn’t going to go away any time soon without a fight!
The huge run-up in oil prices over the last several years, reaching a peak of close to US $150 per barrel this past summer, has given energy companies a big incentive to find new ways of harvesting unconventional oil, especially in North America.
tags: oil shale, oil
Posted from here.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
-
Utility Products - ZigBee Smart Energy Technology Spurs Smart Grid Energy Conservation - ZigBee Smart Energy Technology Spurs Smart Grid Energy Conservation
Extremely informative article on Smart Homes, HANs, NANs, Demand Response and ZigBee
Homeowners desperately need new methods to conserve energy. Utilities desperately need a system with which they can improve service and manage peak demand problems.
Enter the smart grid.
tags: demand response, smart grid, smart meter, zigbee, han, nan
-
IBM, Harvard tap compute cloud for solar research | Green Tech - CNET News
Harvard University and IBM have launched a project to harness the computing muscle of thousands of computers to discover cheap solar energy materials.
The initiative, announced Monday, is part of the IBM-sponsored World Community Grid, which seeks to speed up research on humanitarian challenges with a grid of connected computers
tags: solar energy, world community grid
-
Chilean glaciers retreating due to global warming: report
Chile’s glaciers are on the retreat, a sign of global warming but also a threat to fresh water reserves at the southern end of South America, a report has found.
In a November report, the Chilean water utility — Direccion General de Aguas de Chile (DGA) — said the Echaurren ice fields, which supply the capital with 70 percent of its water needs, are receding
tags: ice, glacier melt, glacier, chile, global warming, climate change
Posted from here.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted from here.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I talked with Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and CEO of Boston Power the other day about their new lithium-ion batteries.
Boston Power are a startup battery business but Dr Lampe-Onnerud is no stranger to lithium ion technology, holding as she does, close to 20 patents for Li-ion technologies.
Boston Power have launched a new series of Li-ion batteries which sound really intriguing. They charge faster than traditional batteries, they hold their charge longer, and while typical Li-ion batteries start to wear after 150 power cycles, the Boston Power ones only start to wear after 1500! This means a far longer lifetime for the batteries, reducing the need to keep buying replacement batteries as charged times decrease.
We also discussed on the call the increasing requirement for batteries for plug-in hybrids and in the near to mid future, the new market for home batteries to take in power when electricity is cheap and potentially sell it back or come off grid when electricity is expensive.
However, from a purely selfish perspective, the thing I want to know most is when will there be a version of this battery available for my MacBook Pro!!!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
-
Wal-Mart’s campaign to protect the environment, poor - Dec. 3, 2008
Children who are forced to pick cotton in Uzbekistan, farmers scratching out a living in Guatemala and salmon fishermen in Bristol Bay, Alaska, would not seem to have much in common. But all are feeling the global impact of Wal-Mart.
As the world’s largest retailer, with $379 billion in revenues last year, Wal-Mart has long been a powerful force in the global economy - a bully, its critics would say. For years, they assailed Wal-Mart for squeezing suppliers over costs, driving mom-and-pop stores out of business or crushing efforts to organize its workers.
These days, though, the company is winning praise for using its leverage - that’s a polite term for bullying - to protect the environment and help the poor.
tags: walmart, sustainability
-
SiliconRepublic.com: Green energy – how electricity 2.0 will be bigger than Web 2.0 - R&D
You could be forgiven for thinking that the technology industry today is all about smart phones and Web 2.0. But the smartest minds in Silicon Valley have their eyes and wallets on a bigger prize, and it’s a century-old resource called electricity.
tags: electricity 2.0, siliconrepublic, cix, wind energy, solar energy
-
Hawaii to be 1st state with electric car stations - Yahoo! News
Hawaii has unveiled plans to be first in the nation to roll out electric car stations statewide — a move the governor hailed as a major step toward weaning the islands off oil.
tags: better place, hawaii, phev
Posted from here.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Recent Comments