So what happens if the trend toward higher global temperatures continues, and we find ourselves in a world being changed by rising sea levels, droughts, extinction of species - the whole pantheon of catastrophe that one could imagine? Not to worry! University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel has come up with a plan which would effectively block a large enough percentage of the sun's energy to counterbalance the warming.

Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD has suggested purposely shooting sulfur into the atmosphere to curb global warming.

Doing so would mimic a volcanic eruption, such as Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, which cooled the Earth by 1 degree Fahrenheit in the year following the eruption. Crutzen's plan calls for releasing the sulfur in the stratosphere, where it would remain for 1-2 years, at a cost of $25-$50 billion.

I'm confident Professor Crutzen knows far more than I do, but I don't know if more tinkering, especially by chemically altering the atmosphere, is something I feel very comfortable about.

Many U.S. cities are taking a fresh, green approach to their rooftop spaces. These roof systems have many benefits, according to the EPA, including mitigating rainwater runoff, prolonging the life of the underlying roof material, reducing noise transfer, insulating a building from extreme temperatures, particularly during the summer months, and by absorbing air pollution and storing carbon. The City of Chicago currently has 43 green roof projects, while Portland has 42 such projects.

Another article on this subject appeared two years ago in National Geographic News.

A thought-provoking piece from a think tank called Foreign Policy in Focus caught my eye today. Cap and trade, to summarize again, is the policy in which a GHG emitter is "capped" at a set value of emissions and that if they exceed that value, they must trade with an emitter who is under their set value. This value can be gradually decreased in order to ease back on overall emissions. This method worked effectively in reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution from existing power plants in the United States, which helped to curb acid rain. However, trying to manage a cap-and-trade system on a global scale would be nightmarish in it's complexity.

This article argues that a better solution is to set performance standards, not on existing emitters but on new sources. Save the expensive retrofits on coal-fired power plants, but any new coal burners (and there will be a LOT of them!) would have to meet stringent CO2 emission requirements. I'll be writing more later on how coal plants can almost eliminate emissions. The same idea would work for automobiles, appliances, etc. Performance standards set in the 1970s vastly improved air quality, both by reducing emissions from power plants and from autos. The Montreal Protocol set global standards for phasing out the production of CFCs and is solving the global ozone-layer problem.

I believe there are opportunities for vast improvements on our CO2 emissions, and that some people are going to get very, very wealthy due to their innovations.

A Vermont advocacy organization called the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) has released a report titled Building Solutions: Energy Efficient Homes Save Money and Reduce Global Warming. While the group's home page makes their political leanings clear, and I don't advocate any political party or affiliation, I do appreciate some of what the report has to say about making homes more energy efficient. The report is too bold, in my opinion, in many of it's statements on global warming.

Vermont has many older (pre-1940) homes with poor insulation and older home heating equipment. New furnaces are as much as 40% more efficient than models which are over 15 years old. In addition, improving weatherization and insulation of a home - which can cost a couple of thousand dollars but will generally pay for itself within 4 years, according to the report - can also reduce the burden on the state, as lower-income families may require less assistance to pay their heating bills. Since the cost of heating oil - one of the most common sources of heat in the Northeast - has skyrocketed in the last 7 years, more families than ever before are requiring assistance to pay their heating bills.

I know from personal experience that upgrading a furnace in an older home can have a dramatic effect on fuel oil consumption. Our previous home was built in 1945, and when we moved in, it had the original furnace. The thing ran like a champ, but it was tremendously inefficient. When we upgraded, we found we used at least one third less fuel oil than we had used before. Some weatherization is expensive, such as replacement windows, and some, such as blocking drafts through electrical outlets on outside walls, is not. Lots of information on weatherizing your home can be found here.

Here's a headline you don't see every day - from Australia's Daily Telegraph - "Nukes 'would stop global warming.'" And to think I didn't even know Australia had the bomb! Oh wait, it's NOT the bomb they're talking about! It's nuclear energy!

"The only way you can justify adding nuclear into the mix is if you are determined to reduce greenhouse gases," Dr Switkowski told ABC TV tonight.

The Greentech Innovation Network - created by venture capital group Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers - met late this week to discuss which strategies - both policies and technologies - could most effectively fight global warming.

The group has already exercised considerable political clout, playing an important role in persuading California's law makers to pass some of the nation's toughest legislation on greenhouse gas emissions. Now they're debating whether to push for national limits.

They're all putting considerable economic backing into companies developing alternative fuels, renewable sources of energy and "green" products. In addition, they sponsor the $100,000 "KPCB Prize for Green Innovation" to reward entrepreneurs in green technology.

I liked this quote from Iceland's president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson:

"If we put all our efforts on the parliaments, this will take decades. We need to build constructive alliances between the scientific community and the business community."

Grimsson wants his country to develop a hydrogen-based economy.

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has written a piece on airline efficiency (among other things) for My Turn Online, Newsweek Enterprise, hosted by MSNBC.com. While the first paragraph kind of left me scratching my head - Lovelock's Gaia theory forms the basis of our current understanding of global warming???? I know Lovelock has become interested in global warming in recent years, and in fact has said we're past "the point of no return," but the Gaia theory isn't really about global warming...I need to get back on point - the rest of the Branson article contains some pretty interesting stuff.

I've said before that some people are going to get rich offering "solutions" to global warming. Branson's already rich, which gives him the capital to invest to get even richer. Some of his airline efficiency ideas are so simple it seems almost unbelievable they aren't already in use. If it uses less fuel to have a plane sit on the ground waiting for a gate than it does to have it circle in the air, why would that not be the first choice? Airlines are so cash-strapped, you would think that saving fuel would be highly interesting to them.

An article today in the New York Times (registration required, but free) discusses many of the economic issues raised by addressing global warming. The article covers a lot of the familiar ground of cap-and-trade controls versus a carbon tax, including references to legislative proposals before Congress, including one from these two:

which envisions a cap-and-trade system. In nosing around looking for more information on the various legislative proposals, I found site with a couple of very interesting graphs comparing the different global warming bills before the 109th Congress. That site also includes a brief description of each of the proposals. It amazes me how much emissions have increased since 1990.

Back to the article in the Times - I had a quibble with this paragraph...

Yet it is increasingly clear that there is a considerable cost to carbon dioxide emissions, especially to future generations, as climate specialists warn of declines in farm output in poor tropical countries, fiercer hurricanes and coastal floods that could make many people refugees.

It seems to me that better examples of potential future threats could have been used. We've already discussed the "fiercer hurricanes" controversy - will they, won't they? No one really knows. As for farm output in poor tropical countries - why not hit Times readers where they live, or rather where they eat, by talking about America's breadbasket moving to Canada, as the NY Times Blog did just last week? I had to laugh at that blog entry, too...for the same reason one of the commenters over there did....it contains this quote from a news release:

In a world where 75 percent of poor people depend on agriculture, climate change will have a profound impact on their food security.

Do you know ANYONE who doesn't rely on agriculture? Unless some people have a Star Trek-style replicator, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, are completely reliant on hunting and gathering - I would guess EVERYONE depends on agriculture.

Ahhhhh....I've drifted a little off topic. That's what happens when I get up too early!

I got an e-mail plugging this engine as a hope for abating global warming through much improved efficiency. It's a snazzy website with cool graphics and a sweet video presentation, but - well, let's just say I didn't take auto shop in high school. And when I say that, I mean my understanding of even the basic function of the internal cumbustion engine is limited. So any engineers out there want to take a look and see if this actually looks like the great breakthrough it claims to be?

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may remember reading about Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, who has a plan to use sulfate aerosols to mitigate global warming, or Arizona astronomer Roger Angel, who has a plan to launch an array of sunlight refracting shades which would reduce the amount of solar energy which reaches the Earth. Both of these are examples of something called geoengineering.

The Fall 2006 issue of UCAR Quarterly from the National Center for Atmospheric Research has an interesting article on geoengineering which includes more information both of the above plans and also touches on NCAR's own John Latham's ideas on increasing the number of droplets in marine stratocumulus clouds. Latham's research indicates that a 10 % increase in the number of droplets could increase the reflectivity of the clouds enough to counteract as much as a doubling of carbon dioxide.

None of these solutions would be used unless the climate was truly teetering on the edge of catastrophe - many scientists have concerns about Crutzen's work, although it underwent peer review, and Angel's plan is massive in scale and expensive. The fact that these ideas are even being considered shows that level of concern the scientific community has over global warming.

"If sizeable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will not happen and temperatures rise rapidly, then climatic engineering . . . is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects," writes Crutzen. He stresses that the technique would be a last-ditch option that "should not be used to justify inadequate climate policies."

An invitation-only workshop was held on the subject in November, and a report on that meeting should be out by January.

The December 7 issue of Nature contained an interesting article on U.S. biofuel production (subscription only). As I'm sure many of you are aware, corn - from which ethanol is made - is a fairly inefficient source of energy. It's high in starch, which is easy to convert to ethanol, but much of the corn plant's energy goes to producing structural materials such as stalk which are harder to break down. Estimates vary, but the energy output may only be twice the amount of energy it takes to produce the ethanol.

The cellulose and hemicellulose which make up the stalks and also make up most biomass which could be converted to ethanol require pretreatment with acids, peroxides and ammonia, often along with mechanical shredding or pressing of the material. Following that step comes the use of enzymes to produce fermentable sugars. Interestingly, one of the companies concentrating on these enzymes got it's start distressing denim for jeans.

Some other plants, including a variety of prairie grasses, may be more energy-rich than corn. A number of researchers are studying the viability of these other resources.

The article wraps up with a brief discussion of butanol as an alternative to ethanol. Ethanol is corrosive, volatile and has a tendency to pick up water, making it difficult to transport. Butanol is a four-carbon alcohol which contains a higher energy per gallon than ethanol and can be shipped through existing pipelines.

The large companies who are working on these biofuels have some pretty familiar names - BP and DuPont are working with British Sugar to adapt an ethanol fermentation facility in East Anglia to produce Butanol. And BP has announced it will invest $500 million over 10 years to fund an Energy Biosciences Institute at a major academic center.

My post on the Tesla roadster brought several comments about both the price and the technology. I've been poking around looking for more information and found some interesting stuff. First, a more family (and wallet) friendly all electric vehicle, an SUT/SUV from Phoenix Motorcars in Ontario, California. This will be a far more affordable vehicle than the Tesla, with a price tag around $45,000. With acceleration and top speeds well able to handle highway driving, it's a pretty attractive package.

Battery power has had some hurdles to overcome, and according to CNET News, new technology has created far more stable batteries. It's this new technology which makes this generation of electrics much more appealing, with higher speeds and longer range between charges.

There are still many questions to be answered about all-electrics, but certainly in some applications - such as corporate or agency fleets, they can be effective.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember an entry I wrote back in early November discussing George Monbiot's opinion piece titled "How sport is killing the planet." Apparently Mr. Monbiot's piece has resonated through the world of motorsports. Thanks to fellow blogger and big-time racing fan Alan Reppert for sending me a hard copy of an article from the December 2006 issue of F1 Racing (not available on-line) titled F1's Green Credentials.

Seems Formula 1 racing is feeling the pressure from the green lobby and is taking steps to improve their image. Turbo engines may return by 2011 - back in the '80s, turbos were a symbol of F1 excess, but the new turbos would be a means of producing power efficiently. In addition, F1

has the potential to provide the major car manufacturers with an opportunity to develop, showcase and popularise future technologies that will help to reduce the global problem of transport emissions.

The article doesn't specify any technologies which will be focused on, but does mention the potential of energy recovery from functions such as braking.

In other sports-related news, Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah will be holding a town hall meeting at 6 p.m. tomorrow, January 9th at the Eccles Center to present the first-ever comprehensive study on global warming's potential effect on the Utah ski and snowboard industry. The meeting will include a presentation of the material from Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, followed by model results of temperatures and snowfall amounts through the remainder of the century. Park City Mountain Resort has received 97 inches of snow so far this ski season.

I received a press release in my inbox from The National Arbor Day Foundation - which so far hasn't appeared on their web site. It's touting Toyota's partnership with the National Arbor Day Foundation to promote Toyota's "Highway to the Future: Mobile Hybrid Experience" national tour.

According to the press release, Toyota will work with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 50,000 trees in honor of those visiting the experience, to help offset the "carbon footprint" of the trucks used to transport the tour.

The trees will be planted in national forests damaged by wildfire, insects, disease, and other natural causes. They will provide wildlife habitat, prevent soil erosion, clean the air, and make a positive impact for years to come.

Toyota is also partnering with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant a tree for each 8-series lift truck delivered in 2007.

Was the pressure too much, or too late? ExxonMobil has stopped funding groups skeptical of global warming, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Exxon stopped funding CEI in 2006, prior to the letter from Senators Snowe and Rockefeller as well as the UCS report, and the letter from England's Royal Society.

"Mark Boudreaux, a spokesman for Exxon, the world's biggest publicly traded company, said its position on climate change has been 'widely misunderstood and as a result of that, we have been clarifying and talking more about what our position is.'

Exxon's funding action was confirmed this week by its vice president for public affairs. Kenneth Cohen told the Wall Street Journal that Exxon decided in late 2005 that its 2006 nonprofit funding would not include CEI and 'five or six' similar groups.

Cohen declined to identify the other groups, but their names could become public this spring when Exxon releases its annual list of donations to nonprofit groups."

The oil company is also involved, along with representatives of 20 other companies, in talks sponsored by Resources for the Future, a D.C. based nonprofit. The talks, which began in December, should generate a report this fall with recommendations to legislators on how to regulate greenhouse emissions.

If ExxonMobil shows the same commitment to developing alternative fuels that BP and Shell have shown, we may yet shake our oil addiction.

My local newspaper, the Harrisburg Patriot-News, featured an article Sunday on the approval of a new wind farm in Pennsylvania. Having grown up in Minnesota, wind is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Pennsylvania's weather. The wind is a far more constant companion on the Plains. The wind farms in Pennsylvania are built on the ridges that run from the southwest to the northeast across the state. While they are almost silent, homeowners who live near a wind farm in Somerset County claim the turbines are loud enough at times to keep them awake at night. A more significant ecological issue involves birds, which migrate along the ridges and are sometimes killed by the turbines.

The wind farm discussed in the article will generate 50 megawatts of electricity and it will take at least 33 of the 416-foot turbines to produce that much power.

Fifty megawatts is enough to provide electricity for 50,000 homes. In comparison, Unit 1 of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant is rated at 850 megawatts. Wind farm output varies by the time of year, and it tends to be lowest in the summer.

That's an amazing statistic. It would take over 560 wind turbines to produce as much electricity as Unit 1 of TMI. Wind power may well have a role in our current and future energy picture - the German state of Schleswig-Holstein currently meets one quarter of its energy demand through wind power - but it seems clear that we also need to be looking more closely again at the potential for nuclear power to meet our ever-growing energy demands. France did so after the oil crisis in the 1970s and currently is one of the lowest carbon-emitters in Europe. In my mind, the answer to today's headline question is: No, not THE answer.

I enjoyed a piece today from William Tucker in The American Spectator on global warming and nuclear power. Yes, The American Spectator. I can just imagine right now some of the regulars here are falling over in shock because I'm posting an article from that source. And others have their undies in a bunch for the same reason. The author of the piece wants to encourage the use of nuclear power and wants to use global warming as a "motivator" for environmentalists who would otherwise be against it.

The author then documents his research into global warming and the tactics which have come into play on both sides, which he refers to a guerilla warfare with both sides now at the point of trying to outlaw the other's opinion. Finally he decides perhaps both sides are right. Maybe there's a natural cycle which is being amplified by human activity. His final conclusion:

As far as I'm concerned, both sides have a point. Yes, there was a Medieval Warming and yes, the sun is the main agent of temperature change, but something is also happening with carbon emissions that is pushing us into unknown territory. It's worth doing something about it.

I hope this convinces both sides to take another look at nuclear power.

Did you watch the State of the Union Address? I try to watch it every year, and this year was no exception. Of course, I had another motivation beyond simply getting a feel for what the President wants to accomplish this year - I had heard that Mr. Bush was going to discuss energy policy and climate change. And so he did. As is always the case with the State of the Union, the President's remarks on each subject were fairly brief. As such, I will simply include what he said on energy here.

Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America's economy running and America's environment clean. For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists -- who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments, raise the price of oil and do great harm to our economy.

It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply -- and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power -- by even greater use of clean coal technology ... solar and wind energy ... and clean, safe nuclear power. We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol -- using everything from wood chips, to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

We have made a lot of progress, thanks to good policies in Washington and the strong response of the market. Now even more dramatic advances are within reach. Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years -- thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 -- this is nearly five times the current target. At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks -- and conserve up to eight and a half billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.

Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but will not eliminate it. So as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must also step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment -- and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.

I'm sure this is far less action, and less acknowledgment of the issue of climate change than many would like - especially with the press for increased domestic oil production - but at least it signals a move toward more energy independence, which in my opinion is a good thing.

Just an off-topic note to wrap up this morning - I know many of you are probably wondering why your comments from this weekend haven't been published. I helped out in forecasting Monday and had to travel to State College yesterday for some meetings (yes, we usually handle meetings on the phone, but I had to be there in person this time). I have a lot of things to catch up on today, and comments and e-mail is on the list, along with a lot of reading and writing.

Over the past several months, California has taken many steps which position it as the leader in the nation in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, I was a little surprised to see that California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine plans to introduce a bill to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012. I understand that the technology behind incandescents is almost 125 years old and they are tremendously inefficient - with only about 5 percent of the energy they receive being converted to light. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use at least 2/3 less energy and last much longer. They also produce up to 70 percent less heat than an incandescent lamp. As I said earlier this week, I LOVE efficiency, but this.....

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine plans to introduce the bill this week, saying the spiral light sources are so efficient that consumers should be forced to use them.

I have to say that makes me a little uncomfortable. It's just the use of the word "forced," I guess. I suppose that's how some motorcyclists feel about helmet laws - which I'm in favor of, by the way.

One of my first entries on this blog was about CFLs. I've been replacing most of the incandescents in my own home with CFLs as they've been burning out, and I've generally been very happy with the results. The only - minor - irritation is the extra beat it takes after flipping the switch for the lamp to light. I do have some fixtures that CFLs just would not look right in, and I wouldn't be happy to have my choice legislated away from me.

CFLs do contain mercury and need to be recycled accordingly. I read a piece on environmental blog treehugger.com which argues that CFLs actually reduce mercury pollution because most of our electricity is produced using fossil fuels, especially coal, which gives off mercury during its combustion.

Sir Richard Branson announced today a $25 million prize for the first person to come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Obviously, CO₂ is not a pollutant in the way the toxic materials scrubbed out of smokestacks are pollutants - in fact, it's a necessary component of the atmosphere.

The prize, which Branson announced along with former Vice President Al Gore and British ex-diplomat Crispin Tickell, will initially be open for five years. The winner will have to come up with a way of removing one billion metric tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years. $5 million of the prize money will be paid upfront, and the remaining $20 at the end.

How many trees would it take to remove one billions metric tons per year out of the atmosphere? YIKES.

According to Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery, 200 metric gigatons of carbon have accumulated in the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution, raising concentrations by 100 parts per million.

Will anyone step up and take this prize? It will be interesting to watch. Richard Branson continues to put his money where his mouth is on the subject of global warming, I respect him for that.

Nature's special issue on climate change features two articles on carbon trading and the global carbon market. The first, Carbon copies, addressed the likelihood that some sort of cap and trade system will be implemented in the U.S. within the next 10 years, quite possibly by 2010. The system will probably look much like the system currently in place in the European Union, where 362 tonnes of carbon were traded in 2005. Cap and trade, you probably remember, is the system in which carbon emitters are "capped" at a certain amount of emissions and if they are over that cap, they must buy credits from an emitter who is under their cap. Cap and trade has limitations - it could work for industry and power generators, but not for transportation in any simple way. One of the main points of the Nature article is that the carbon market should be compatible with the European market rather than reinventing something that is already working in another part of the world.

The second article, Is the global carbon market working? discusses whether the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a global market for emissions reductions established in 2003 by the Kyoto Protocol, is working to effectively reduce carbon emissions. Here's an excerpt from the article explaining how the CDM works:

The CDM works by paying developing countries to adopt lower-polluting technologies than they otherwise would. For example, rather than building an inefficient but cheap coal-fired power plant, a Chinese utility might choose instead to build a more efficient gas-fired plant that emits less carbon dioxide. The difference in potential carbon emissions between the coal and gas plants can, after monitoring and certification, be converted into CDM credits that can be sold to an industrialized nation party to the Kyoto Protocol. The revenue from the credits enables the utility to afford the more expensive gas plant. The purchase of low-cost credits by industrialized nations to offset their own emissions reduces the cost of complying with Kyoto. The mechanism works because it is cheaper to construct low-carbon energy infrastructure from scratch in developing nations than to modify or replace existing technology in industrialized nations.

Sounds great, but is it working? The system has some serious problems. The CDM covers all six Kyoto Protocol gases (CO₂, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride), and although even China and India have embraced the system, the incentives for building low-carbon energy infrastructure haven't been effective. Instead, almost 30% of the CDM credits currently come from capturing and destroying trifluoromethane (HFC-23), a by-product of the manufacture of refrigerant gases. HFC-23 is easy and cheap to capture and destroy - industrialized nations do so voluntarily. It would be considerably cheaper for industrialized nations to pay for the installation of the technology to capture and destroy the HFC-23 and eliminate that from the list of possibilities for the trading scheme.

A simple solution offered in the article is to simply make the global carbon market a market for CO₂ rather than for all six Kyoto Protocol gases. Use the developing world's participation in the CDM to put those nations on "a path to a low-carbon future" through the development of lower carbon energy sources. Address the other Kyoto Protocol gases in other agreements.

That solution is simple, but unlikely to occur:

What matters in the long term is the type of energy infrastructure that gets locked into place in the world economy. Tackling that problem requires identifying economic, national security, as well as energy priorities of the major developing economies and then finding ways to align them with low-carbon energy infrastructures. The CDM, no matter what the price of carbon, is unlikely to convince China that it makes more sense to depend on foreign sources of natural gas than on cheaper domestic coal. Similarly, India is unlikely to pursue nuclear energy to significantly reduce its carbon emissions, given the challenges of non-proliferation and nuclear waste, without greater international support.

Additional measures will be required in the future to get all nations involved in cutting carbon emissions.

I've heard so much about the promise of a hydrogen economy. I had a lot of questions - how do we get the hydrogen we need? How do we store it? And how exactly does it work as an energy source. It's not a fuel - but rather a "carrier" of energy. When you have questions like this, who should you turn to? Oh, I know! Popular Mechanics! What a great magazine. It's a little like an old store in State College, O.W. Houts, where you can buy everything you could ever need from hardware to china to potato salad. Popular Mechanics will teach you how to fix your car, tell you about the latest scientific breakthroughs and help you choose the right outdoor equipment for you.

In November, Popular Mechanics featured a very informative article called The Truth About Hydrogen which answered many of the questions regarding the challenges facing practical employment of hydrogen power. The article breaks down those challenges under the categories of production, storage, distribution and use. It's clear that each of these is a major hurdle which will need to be overcome in order have a true hydrogen economy, especially if we want a clean hydrogen economy. Right now, most hydrogen produced for industrial use is produced from natural gas in a process which produces, among other things, carbon dioxide. Storage and distribution are also currently energy intensive tasks. The price tag on a hydrogen economy will be huge.

The vision of our world thriving on a hydrogen economy is a beautiful one, but the road to that place will be rough and steep.

Swiss scientists have made a major advance in water photooxidation, a device which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using ordinary sunlight. The new technology has an efficiency of 42 percent, and increase of 5 percent from the previous technology, which had an external quantum efficiency of about 37 percent. The details can be found in the full report from the American Chemical Society.

An esteemed plethora of our nation's corporate heads--along with sundry experts and organizations, all calling themselves the Global Roundtable on Climate Change--yesterday called on world governments to cut emissions. According to the Reuters article as picked up by CNN, "The group includes General Electric, Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor North America, investment bank Goldman Sachs, and Wal-Mart among its major corporations." The article helpfully points out that "President George W. Bush's administration has rejected mandatory caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases in the United States that contribute to a documented rise in world temperatures -- which is linked to more severe storms, worse droughts, rising seas and other ills." It will be interesting to see how long the Bush administration will continue to hold out on the issue of emissions caps when one of its key pillars of support--corporate America--is increasingly more vocal about global warming. After all, it's hard to say no to GE and Wal-Mart.

Not to be outdone, yesterday the European Union also called for emissions cuts, as related in an article in this morning's The New York Times (free registration may be required to read the article). The EU's ministers "pledged Tuesday to raise their own targets if industrialized countries like the United States made similar efforts." (The Bush administration must be feeling pretty friendless these days, although I suspect they're more concerned about the stance of corporate America than they are about that of the minister of Finland.)

All is not harmonious amongst the members of the EU, however. A proposal that "20 percent of all energy must come from renewable sources, like wind and solar power, by 2020" was not approved because of resistance from Poland and Hungary, who are concerned that the poorer European countries will further fall behind as they attempt to develop their economies.

Sweden and Denmark, on the other hand, are pushing for a 30 percent target, and the German Parliament has recommended a 40 percent target. Concludes the article, "Such differences could foreshadow a showdown in March, when political leaders are to meet in Brussels and reach a final position."

The Allegheny Front (a producer of environment-related radio content for western PA stations) recently ran this piece (The Price of Global Warming) on carbon offsets. Many providers now sell carbon offsets to individuals and organizations that are looking for ways to reduce their contribution to global warming. The money generated by the purchase of these credits would, for example, go toward planting trees that would theoretically absorb enough carbon dioxide to balance the pollution generated by an SUV or a factory. As discussed in the piece (which runs a little over four minutes), there's no standardization yet when it comes to carbon offsets, so prices vary significantly from provider to provider.

If you're interested in possibly purchasing an offset (which I'm not endorsing here since I haven't done any research on any of the companies or their products) or at least finding out more information about offsets or their providers, then here's a handy guide to carbon offset providers.

Al Gore has announced a series of concerts around the world to focus on the threat of climate change. The concerts, dubbed Live Earth, will take place in seven cities, one on each of the populated continents plus an additional concert in Asia in July. More than 100 performers are scheduled to appear, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg and Bon Jovi. I read this and felt a little bit like I was having a flashback to the '80s, when Live Aid, Farm Aid and other large scale benefit concerts were born. The next thought that crossed my mind, as I read the list of performers, was what does Tipper think?

The state of Utah has given the University of Utah Biofuels Program $6 million for five years through the Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative for the development of algae-biodiesel. The university plans that the biofuel will be cost-competitive by 2009. Algae can produce up to 10,000 gallons of oil per acre.

The best thing about algae-based biofuel is that it eliminates the competition that exists with land-based crops used for biofuels. Corn and soybeans must be grown in fertile soil and are themselves food commodities for people and animals. Meeting the demands of producing food and energy on a limited amount of arable land is a great challenge. Using algae eliminates that competition.

In January, Sir Richard Branson visited a New Zealand-based biofuel company, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation to discuss the possibility of an investment from Virgin Fuel, Branson's project investing profits from his air and rail businesses to develop "clean" energy.

How'd you like to head out to mow or cut brush with hydrogen fuel cell-powered lawn care equipment? It may be possible thanks to a breakthrough from Princeton researcher Jay Benzinger and his student, Claire Woo.

Most fuel cell designs use complex electronic designs to achieve acceptable efficiency, but this new process controls hydrogen feed to match needed power output, much like the feed of gasoline is controlled in a standard internal combustion engine. The system uses 100 percent of the fuel, requiring no fuel recycling system, and should make small engines possible.

The hydrogen to power the small engines could be supplied in returnable tanks, much as propane for gas grills is today.

The Union of Concerned Scientists put their engineers to work to develop an inexpensive minivan which would meet or exceed the most strict greenhouse gas emissions standards in the nation (those adopted by California and 10 other states and currently being challenged in court by automakers). The design uses a combination of existing technologies which would add only about $300 to the sticker price of a minivan and would result in savings of $1300 over the lifetime of the vehicle.

The minivan, named the Vanguard by the UCS, is not a hybrid. It's a flex-fuel vehicle which also features variable valve timing, a 6-speed "automatic-manual" transmission and cylinder deactivation, which shuts down half the cylinders in a large engine when full power is not needed, as well as a host of other features to improve emissions. All of these features are available in some vehicles currently, but no vehicle uses them all.

The full technical report is available as a pdf file, and includes specific cost savings and emissions savings statistics.

Problems with the Vanguard? Well, the availability of E85, mostly. Here in Pennsylvania, only 11 stations available to the public sell E85. California currently has only one station open to the public. Production of ethanol from corn will always be limited by the supply of the crop. Competition of use between ethanol production and animal feed will drive prices higher. Research continues on other crop possibilities which could make E85 a more viable alternative for a large number of vehicles.

I got sent a link to some quirky little PSAs produced by Penn State Public Broadcasting with funding from the West Penn Power Sustainable Energy Fund (WPPSEF).

The point of the spots is to encourage people to save energy by taking small, easy steps, and used the angle of saving money to be more effective.

Whenever I read about biofuels, I end up with a lot of questions about land use and hidden costs involved in the growing, harvesting and processing of the crops involved. One statistic I read some time ago stated that if all U.S. corn and soybean production was dedicated to producing biofuels, it would only meet 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand, and of course would massively impact food supplies.

The grasses can be grown on land which has been depleted by agriculture. Irrigation is required only as the grasses become established. No cultivation is required, and herbicide treatment is not required. Only phosphorus replacement fertilization would be needed, as legumes provide needed nitrogen. All aboveground biomass is used to produce energy, rather than just the seed. The gross bioenergy yield from LIHD plots was 68.1 Gj ha^-1year^-1. Fossil energy needed for biomass production, harvest and transport to a biofuel production facility was estimated at 4.0 Gj ha^-1year^-1. The article goes on to break down a number of different potential energy production numbers depending on how the biomass is used.

Conversion into gasoline and diesel synfuels and electricity via integrated gasification and combined cycle technology with Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbon synthesis (IGCC-FT) is estimated to net 28.4 GJ ha^-1. In contrast, net energy gains from corn and soybeans from fertile agricultural soils are 18.8 GJ ha^-1 for corn grain ethanol and 14.4 GJ ha^-1 for soybean biodiesel. Thus, LIHD biomass converted via IGCC-FT yields 51% more usable energy per hectare from degraded infertile land than does corn grain ethanol from fertile soils.

Another benefit of using perennial grasses for biofuel production is a net annual carbon storage in the soil. LIHD plots sequestered 4.4 megagrams of carbon dioxide per hectare per year in soil and roots for the decade of observation. The trend seems to indicate that number would diminish somewhat in a second decade, but would still be much higher than what other crops store.

Without accounting for CO₂ storage, 5x10⁸ ha of agriculturally abandoned and depleted land might produce about 13% of global transportation fuel and 19% of global electricity consumption. A hectare is 10,000 square meters.

Katie and her cohost - Dr. Joe Sobel - talk about simple things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint, and give you a resource to use to calculate your carbon footprint. All this along with some of this week's green headlines, this week on Headline: Earth.

I noted here last month the attempt in California to ban incandescent light bulbs. Now the world's three largest light bulb makers have announced they will push European consumers to switch to energy-saving bulbs.

Last month, the Australian government announced plans to ban incandescent bulbs within three years, and a New Jersey lawmaker has introduced a bill seeking to ban the bulbs there as well.

The European Union has not called for a ban on the bulbs, but encourages the use of more efficient lighting.

Is becoming vegan the best way to fight global warming? It is according to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who have sent Al Gore a letter pushing the former Vice President to emphasize diet change as a means of cutting greenhouse gases.

The livestock sector does produce more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation, making the PETA argument sensible. For most Americans, switching to a hybrid car may be easier than switching to a meatless diet.

We've talked about Brazilian ethanol here before and some readers have raised questions about damage to the Amazon rain forest - not because rain forest is being cut to grow sugar cane, but because sugar cane is pushing other crops into the rain forest region. Protection of the Amazon has been highlighted this week in the run-up to President Bush's trip.

Brazil slowed the loss of the rain forest by 11 percent last year, but if the region's soybean market expands, growers will push into the Amazon region. Farmland farther south in Brazil has largely moved to sugar cane production.

As the owner of a "frequently emitting" Norwegian Elkhound, I had to laugh when I read about the opportunity to buy carbon offsets for your pet. The idea, from Australian company Easy Being Green, is one of many carbon offsets offered by the company. You'll find the pet offsets under the Funny gifts link on the left column of their page, if you're interested.

Easy Being Green provides consumers in Australia with energy-saving light bulbs and low-flow shower heads along with carbon offsets.

Okay, maybe not 101. But did you know that fiber from processed and sterilized cow manure could take the place of sawdust in fiberboard? It's true, thanks to researchers at Michigan State University. Once the manure is processed, it no longer smells.

What does this have to do with global warming? We know there are a lot of cows on the Earth, and that no matter what PETA says, the world is unlikely to go vegan any time soon. Those cattle produce more greenhouse gases than the transport sector. Farms have become so heavily populated with cattle that farmers are beginning to have a hard time disposing of the animal waste. Some large livestock operations are now installing expensive manure treatment systems known as anaerobic digesters, and one of the things they do is to capture the methane gas from the manure and use it to generate electricity.

The leftover solids can be used for things like potting soil and animal bedding, and now perhaps for fiberboard. The quality of the fiberboard produced seems to match or even beat the quality of wood-based fiberboard. The question is, will consumers be willing to buy a product that's made from animal waste?

Here is some additional information about the use of recovered methane as an energy source.

A new variation of a platinum-nickel alloy may be a key to the development of hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory have identified this new tweak on a familiar alloy, which increased the catalytic activity of a fuel cell cathode by 90-fold over the platinum-carbon cathode catalysts used today.

Pure platinum is too expensive to use as a catalyst, and its performance degrades quickly through the creation of by-products such as hydroxide ions, which bond with the platinum atoms. The new configuration of the platinum-nickel alloy has shown itself to be 10 times better than a surface of pure platinum.

Hydrogen power is still in the future, but breakthroughs like this bring the future closer.

One of the problems with hydrogen as an energy source is the problem of transport. Some have championed the idea of hydrogen generation at the point of use, but that raises a host of other questions, including cost. A breakthrough at the University of New Brunswik in Fredricton may help bring a hydrogen economy closer to reality. Researchers have successfully condensed hydrogen gas into a usable solid under mild conditions.

The research is expected to produce reversible hydrogen storage materials that can be processed into a powder for use in limitless commercial applications.

The initial product stores more than six percent hydrogen by weight, and the next step for researchers is to develop a product that stores more than nine percent hydrogen by weight.

It's been a while since we've touched on the subject of geoengineering. Geoengineering sounds so much better than tinkering with the environment to try to stop global warming, doesn't it? Scientists are looking at various plans to stop warming - not as a first line of defense, but more as a last-ditch effort, in case warming continues as predicted and people don't get their emissions under control.

The plans range from fertilizing the ocean with iron dust to boost plankton growth to building artificial "trees" - really carbon dioxide filters mounted high on towers. Some of these we've talked about before; a false volcano and solar shades launched from the earth.

Researchers at Purdue University have made a breakthrough in biofuel processing which could meet all U.S. transportation needs. The process adds hydrogen (generated from a "carbon-free" energy source) to biomass during a step called gasification. The hydrogen prevents the formation of carbon dioxide and increases the process's efficiency. The process triples the volume of biofuels created from a quantity of biomass. The process is called H2CAR.

Currently, 60-70 percent of carbon atoms in the biomass or coal being converted into liquid fuel are lost as carbon dioxide in the conversion process. Using H2CAR, all of the carbon atoms are converted to fuel. The process eliminates the problem of carbon sequestration from biofuel production.

The hydrogen gas needed for the process is generally produced from water via electrolysis - if the electricity used for the process is produced from solar, wind or nuclear power, it is carbon-free. More work needs to be done on producing cheap, carbon-free hydrogen and developing a new type of gasifier for the process.

To grow enough biomass for the entire nation's transportation needs using the conventional method for producing biofuels would require a land area 25 percent to 55 percent the size of the United States, compared with about 6 percent to 10 percent for the H2CAR process.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If you're interested in reading the publication, it is available online.

An Israeli company has developed a system to neutralize nuclear waste. The system, developed by Environmental Energy Resources, is based on plasma gasification technology. The waste is turned into a solid glassy environmentally benign material which leaves no pollution in the soil or water; in fact, the end product has industrial uses.

The European Union's carbon trading scheme hasn't netted very good results so far - greenhouse gas emissions were up by up to 30 million tonnes last year.

Why the failure? Critics and officials alike say too many permits were sold, allowing emitters to buy them cheaply and keep on producing greenhouse gases.

Carbon trading remains one of the most practical solutions for reducing GHG emissions, but this news is proof that planners need to take a lot of care in determining the number of permits available, as the market will then drive the cost of acquiring carbon permits.

Between computer issues and a lot of reader comments, I've had a busy day and I haven't even posted anything new here. Some of the comments that have been interesting to me are those about more efficient buildings, from yesterday's Headline: Earth post. A lot of energy is consumed in the construction of buildings, but in most cases, the energy used in the building over it's lifetime - for heating, cooling, running appliances, etc. - far outweigh the energy consumed in construction. The U.N. Environment Programme has issued a new report today on how Buildings Can Play a Key Role in Combating Climate Change. The full report is also available online.

This is a very complicated issue, since buildings and their requirements vary sharply between the developed and undeveloped world and between climate zones. The report discusses not only ways to build buildings which will use less energy, through things like improved insulation, sunshades in hot and tropical areas, use of energy efficient appliances and use of energy efficient lighting, but also talks about the use of building materials which require less energy to produce - what they call lower "embodied" energy.

According to some estimates, nearly three times the amount of greenhouse gases scheduled to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol could be reduced by the building sector worldwide. The report focuses mostly on new construction, but also touches on savings possible due to refurbishment of current structures. Any remodeling comes with a price, of course, which is often a stumbling block. The report suggests adding efficiency while making other repairs - adding insulation when repairing a roof, for example.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember a post from mid-December about trees, and the importance of their physical location in terms of whether they slowed global warming or enhanced it. I had a little feeling of deja vu this morning when I opened an article published yesterday at Scientific American.com. This new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found similar results.

Forests in tropical regions serve as carbon sinks, forests in the mid-latitudes are nearly carbon-neutral, and boreal forests, the zone pictured here in dark green in an image from NASA, actually contribute to global warming.

How is that possible? It's mostly due to albedo, that measure of the reflectivity of the Earth's surface. Tropical trees, growing in very wet soil, produce by a process called evotranspiration a layer of clouds which reflect sunlight. That reduction in solar input combined with the carbon storage in the trees has an overall net cooling effect on the globe. Compare that to the boreal region - primarily coniferous trees in an area covered by snow for a significant portion of the year. The soil is dry, so the trees produce little moisture and few clouds via evotranspiration, and the trees absorb more energy than snow-covered land would reflect.

The study was done using a model which captured all three of these forest characteristics - carbon storage, reflectivity and evotranspiration. In the framework of the model, researchers were able to see what would happen if the entire globe was deforested. The research has value because it shows where reforestation has the most value in mitigating greenhouse gases and reducing global warming.

Trees of course, have importance far beyond their role as carbon sinks. Sustaining forests helps to sustain the world's biodiversity. Making decisions on forestry based solely on global warming isn't good policy for the world.

A new "biofuel cell" that produces electricity from ordinary air spiked with a small amount of hydrogen offers potentially a better alternative to expensive platinum-based fuel cells. Platinum is not only rare, but very expensive. This biofuel cell, developed at Oxford University, uses hydrogenases - enzymes from naturally occurring bacteria that use or oxidize hydrogen in their metabolism. Two electrodes coated with the enzymes are placed in a container of ordinary air with just 3 percent added hydrogen.

That 3 percent is significant, because at 4 percent concentration, hydrogen becomes an explosion hazard.

Prototypes of the cell produced enough electricity to run small electronic devices.

As exciting as this research is, the key to having a hydrogen economy, from a climate change perspective, is to be able to produce hydrogen without using fossil fuels. Nuclear power is certainly an option. Solar is currently far too inefficient to be useful.

We've read a lot about splitting water molecules to make the hydrogen needed for various alternative energy possibilities, but what if we split carbon dioxide molecules instead? That's the goal of new research by Clifford Kubiak, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. Kubiak's system uses solar power to split carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen.

I'll be honest, my first thought on reading that was, "But carbon monoxide is poisonous, who wants that?" Little did I know. Carbon monoxide is a valuable chemical, used in the production of things like detergents and plastics. It can also be converted into liquid fuel. Carbon monoxide is normally produced from natural gas, so, as Kubiak says, "with CO₂ splitting you can save fuel, produce a useful chemical and reduce a greenhouse gas."

The biggest hurdle the researchers face is choosing the right semiconductor to produce enough electricity to split the molecules. Traditional silicon semiconductors produced only about half the needed energy. They are now using a gallium-phosphide semiconductor, which absorbs more visible light. Silicon semiconductors absorb in the infrared range.

I occasionally drive past a house not far from mine that has solar panels mounted on the roof. Big, clunky, ugly solar panels. Not very aesthetically pleasing. Even the lure of saving money on the electric bill would probably push me to put something like that on my house, to be honest. Newer technologies are available, however, that can make solar power useful and attractive to homeowners.

The image above is of flexible solar shingles, developed in the late '90s. These solar shingles can be harnessed into systems which can provide most, if not all, of the electricity needed in an average home. While they are still expensive, tax credits are available to people who choose to use solar power, and the systems do pay for themselves over time.

Elliot Abrams has a new post at the Global Perspective blog which summarizes some current science and science policy issues. Since that blog is not comment-capable, feel free to post your comments and questions to Elliot here.

Elliot will be joining Dr. Joe Sobel as a regular part of the Global Perspective blog, a section of AccuWeather.com's Global Warming Center.

What do a middle school, a water treatment plant and a courthouse have in common? All three are among the American Institute of Architects' Top Ten Green Projects, as chosen by its Committee on the Environment (COTE).

These are projects that use a number of different strategies to make them environmentally sound, from reuse of existing structures to use of sustainable or renewable construction materials to use of systems which conserve enery and water.

A list of the winning projects, along with descriptions of the features that made them stand out to jurors can be found at the AIA's site.

Tip of the hat to my dad for the story of tiny Benson, Minnesota - turkey production capital of the Upper Midwest - which has put turkey waste to work. A power plant, built by Fibrominn, a part of Fibrowatt LLC, uses 700,000 tons of turkey litter - a combination of droppings and bedding material such as wood chips - to produce 55MW of electricity.

Minnesota raises 45 million turkeys each year, with 2 million tons of turkey litter produced. The electricity produced at the Benson plant is enough to power 50,000 homes. For reference, Swift County, where Benson is located, has a population of 11,956, in 4,821 housing units.

Is burning that biomass a good thing, or does it contribute pollution and greenhouse gases to the atmosphere? Burning the waste material does not produce any more pollution than simply letting it decompose, and the ash that is leftover after the material is burned is a 0-17-13 fertilizer with micronutrients such as sulfur and zinc. North American Pres. Randy Tersteec says that 400 pounds of the ash will provide the same amount of nutrients as four tons of the regular poultry litter.

What's a utility company to do? Demand for their product is ever increasing, yet the regulations they know are coming eventually from the government have not yet been established. Utilities are facing decisions on how to invest money - money from shareholders and ratepayers - to best meet the combined needs of increased demand for power along with regulated greenhouse gas emissions that they know are coming in the future.

The article I linked above covers a variety of strategies utility companies can employ to meet these demands, from the kinds of new plants to build to what to do with old, dirty coal burning plants. Renewable energy solutions and conservation are touched on as well.

It seems likely that eventually America will have some variation of "cap and trade" scheme, similar to that used currently by the European Union, in place. Many power companies have embraced the idea. How that is managed, from the number and value of carbon permits to who gets what incentives for new technology, remain to be established. For utility companies, the faster the government makes these decisions, the better - at least they'll know how best to plan for the future.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a new, more efficient method for using solar energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

The process uses oxide materials in nanostructures sandwiched together. Researchers say one of the benefits to this process is that it can be scaled up to produce larger structures in a cost-effective manner.

Headline: Earth turns its attention to science policy this week as Katie Fehlinger visits the Pew Center on Climate Change and interviews Judi Greenwald, Director of Solutions Programs.

Katie also features some of the week's global warming headlines.

The Summary for Policymakers for volume 3 of the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report has been release. This one is on Mitigation of Climate Change. This summary is a little longer than the past two at 35 pages. It's also dense with economics and statistics.

The summary is divided into sections, key sections in terms of content are labeled Greenhouse gas emission trends, Mitigation in the short and medium term (until 2030), Mitigation in the long term (after 2030), Policies, measures and instruments to mitigate climate change and Sustainable development and climate change mitigation.

The report highlights a number of different scenarios for stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and touches on what can be done within different sectors, among them industry, transportation and agriculture. Among the solutions it describes is the implementation of more nuclear power generation, although it says more work needs to be done to ensure safety of the plants and of their hazardous wastes.

Carbon credits, or offsets, which are marketed as a means for an individual, organization or corporation to become "carbon neutral." But do they work? An investigation by the Financial Times has found few environmental benefits from carbon credit projects that have collected millions of dollars.

The FT has found multiple examples of corporations selling carbon offsets for projects which are either inherently profitable or inexpensive to complete. A carbon credit purchased from a company which has already benefitted from a project hardly seems legitimate.

Any type of business where you the consumer pay money for an intangible benefit, the potential exists for abuse. This is not to say that all companies providing carbon credits are operating scams, but how exactly is a consumer supposed to sort out the options and determine where their money will be put to good use? People who have faith in the system as it stands will lose that faith as stories of fraud surface. People who believe AGW is a scam will point to examples of fraud as evidence that they are right, though the carbon offsetting companies rarely if ever have any connection with climate scientists.

I've been watching an episode of PBS' Nova titled Saved by the Sun, about the resurgence in interest in solar power. It's interesting stuff, but still so expensive that on a consumer level, a person has to be devoted to environmentalism to invest in the technology. To provide even most of the electricity needed for a typical home, you are looking at a significant cost. The Nova site includes the story of the conversion of a typical '60s tract home in Southern California to solar power; the family purchased 6-kW of photovoltaic power, 2-kW more than a typical home needs, because they also power an all-electric Toyota RAV4. The initial cost of the solar system? $36,000 - almost half of which was covered by rebates and tax incentives. Other energy improvements the homeowners made - new windows, new roof, added insulation - the full cost to the homeowners added up to $43,000. The system will pay for itself in just over 7 years.

The Nova program also led me to Maine's solar house - an interesting site for anyone who wants to learn more about designing and building a home powered by the sun. This home uses a 4.2-kW array of photovoltaics has a separate array of solar hot water panels that generate heat for the home through radiant heating - the heated water passes through tubing under the floors.

Googling "carbon dioxide scrub" had some interesting results. First on the list was a blog entry from last October that was an eye-opener. Algae bioreactor scrubs CO2 from power plant smokestacks to produce biofuels. I've written about algal oil here before, once in February and once before that in an entry that's been lost somewhere in cyberspace. That entry was based on oilgae.com, a very thorough site on the production of biodiesel fuel from algal oil.

So how does this idea work? According to Greenfuel Technologies Corporation, you take flue gas, or some other gas stream rich in carbon dioxide, and introduce it into a bioreactor, a plastic tank filled with nutrient-rich media and algae. The algae use that carbon dioxide and photosynthesis to grow. Some of the media is withdrawn continuously and the algae is harvested through a drying process. The oil is then extracted from the algae and converted into biodiesel fuel. Ethanol, methane and hydrogen are also potential products from the downstream processing process.

To me, this makes more sense than pumping carbon dioxide into geologic formations as most carbon dioxide sequestration plans call for. Use the gas as we can and get a benefit from it, rather than putting it underground and crossing our fingers, hoping it stays there.

No, this isn't a belated St. Patrick's Day entry - it's a nod to Foster's, Australia's largest brewery. Scientists at the University of Queensland have developed a means of recycling brewery waste water which produces clean water and electricity. How does it work? At the heart of the system is a microbial fuel cell in which bacteria consume the the nutrients - sugar, starch and alcohol - from the brewery waste water and release chemical energy which is converted into electricity.

The system doesn't produce a lot of electricity - the Foster's project is expected to use 2,500 liters (660 gallons - I double checked the numbers myself) of the roughly 2.5 million liters of waste water the brewery produces daily, and the electricity produced will be about enough for one large household. This fuel cell is 250 times bigger than the prototype that's been running at the university for the past three months. If it works as expected at this scale, the next step is to increase the scale again. Breweries, wineries and food processors can make use of this technology, which is particularly attractive in Australia, where drought has driven up the cost of water. At the end of the process, the water is clean enough to drink.

Obviously, this system is not going to power cities filled with people, but if brewers can generate enough electricity to at least reduce their reliance on the grid it should be a win-win - a reduction of expenses for the companies using the system and an ease on the ever-growing demand for electricity.

Love it or hate it, you can't argue with the clout that the world's largest retailer carries. Wal-Mart has made a commitment to go green in its stores and to push for sustainability in its product lines. All this makes good business sense - saving electricity in its stores by reducing lighting needs and shifting to LEDs (light-emitting diodes) for lighting its signs and, in test stores in Aurora, Colo. and McKinney, Texas, in refrigerator cases will save the retailer plenty of money. Insisting suppliers reduce package sizes saves materials, but also saves shelf space.

A company the size of Wal-Mart can make demands of its suppliers and get results. The most recent demand? Cut the mercury in CFL bulbs. Each CFL bulb uses a very small amount of mercury, but as the bulbs become more popular, disposing of them safely will become a more important issue. Some environmentalists have made the argument that they actually produce less mercury pollution than incandescent bulbs because coal-fired power plants produce mercury. CFLs do need to be disposed of properly, however, and that requires consumer responsibility. In my own community, collection of mercury-containing items occurs only once a year, and is a drop-off, rather than a pick-up program. Perhaps Wal-Mart could follow in the footsteps of IKEA, which offers a drop-off spot in each of its stores.

You'd think wind power would be extremely popular with conservationists. After all, it's completely renewable, clean, almost silent, and carbon-free. However, wind has its fair share of critics. The turbines aren't exactly attractive, but more often, the criticism comes from people who say the turbines kill too many birds.

A brief article in this week's edition of Nature discusses wind farms' deadly reputation (this article is subscription only, and honestly - it's not worth paying for on it's own - it's very short. Read if you're a subscriber, or check your local library if you're not but are interested). The subject of this article is a report by the US National Academy of Sciences which found that it takes over 30 wind turbines to create a kill-rate of one bird per year. I believe this is what is called a meta-study; researchers examined the results of 14 studies they considered to be of good quality to reach their conclusions. American wind turbines seem to kill around 40,000 birds per year, while many fewer than are killed by domestic cats.

Wait, though - there are some caveats here. After all, your average cat is killing sparrows and other small birds, while wind turbines in California's Altamont pass has killed golden eagles.

Not too many kitties are killing eagles. Large birds have lower reproduction rates than small birds, so the rate at which they are killed by wind turbines does need to be studied. Just saying "birds" when talking about wind turbine kill rates is a little like comparing apples and bricks.

Johannes Lehmann, a soil scientist at Cornell University, has written an interesting article in the journal Nature on sequestering carbon in soil as biochar (subscription required). Some information on the science of this process is also available at ScienceDaily.com. The process involves heating biomass without oxygen, which produces biochar, a substance with twice as much carbon content than ordinary biomass. This material can then be added to soil.

Biochar locks carbon into the soil for hundreds to perhaps thousands of years, making it a very effective carbon sink. It improves the structure and fertility of soils. Capturing the exhaust from the heating process (pyrolysis) can produce energy such as heat, electricity, biofuel or hydrogen.

Lehmann says biochar sequestration has the potential to turn bioenergy into a carbon-negative industry. He believes this method of carbon sequestration will become attractive when the value of carbon dioxide emissions reaches $37 a tonne. Currently, the Chicago Climate Exchange is trading carbon dioxide at $4 a tonne.

Two of the biggest hurdles to switching to hydrogen-powered equipment, from lawn mowers and chain saws to cars and trucks have been transporting and storing the hydrogen. But what if that wasn't a problem? What if hydrogen was produced on an as-needed basis from a chemical reaction?

That's the subject of new research from Purdue University. The engineers have developed a method that uses an alloy of aluminum and gallium which reacts with water to produce hydrogen. That hydrogen could then be fed directly to an engine. The gallium prevents the aluminum from oxidizing which allows the reaction between the aluminum and water to continue until all the aluminum has been converted to aluminum oxide. The waste products? Gallium, which can be recycled, aluminum oxide, and water. The aluminum oxide can also be recycled, but electricity is required for that process, called salt electrolysis. To make the process carbon neutral, that electricity would need to be generated by a carbon-free source such as nuclear or wind power.

Earlier this week I wrote about a method of using an aluminum and gallium alloy and water to produce hydrogen on demand. By the middle of the week, news came out of Virginia Tech of another means of producing hydrogen on demand.

In this research, conducted by scientists at Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Georgia, polysaccharides from biomass react with a combination of 13 enzymes not found together in nature and water to yield hydrogen and carbon dioxide. A 12-gallon tank could hold 27 kg of starch, the equivalent of 4 kg of hydrogen. The range would be over 300 miles.

This biomass is the same sort of stuff scientists are using to turn into ethanol, but this system is far more efficient, as researcher Y. H. Percival Zhang notes:

"What is more important, the energy conversion efficiency from the sugar-hydrogen-fuel cell system is extremely high--greater than three times higher than a sugar-ethanol-internal combustion engine," Zhang said. "It means that if about 30 percent of transportation fuel can be replaced by ethanol from biomass as the DOE proposed, the same amount of biomass will be sufficient to provide 100 percent of vehicle transportation fuel through this technology."

Like the method I wrote about earlier this week, this process of producing hydrogen on demand eliminates the difficulties of storing and transporting hydrogen. The costs of the hydrogen produced is within Department of Energy (DOE) goals, and the energy storage density of the starch is higher than DOE goals.

The research paper is available online without subscription at the Public Library of Science.

If you're like me, the thought of solar energy brings to mind a picture of flat solar panels, made up of photovoltaic cells. However, there is a different kind of solar collector, which in fact accounts for a far larger percentage of solar energy in the United States. The Kramer Junction Solar Electric Generating Station is a 150 megawatt solar power plant located in California's Mojave Desert. The Kramer Junction plant consists of an array of parabolic mirrors which focus the sun's energy on a narrow tube containing a synthetic oil. The oil is heated, then flows into the power generating station where it heats water to steam which drives a turbine. Kramer Junction is one of several plants in the Mojave Desert which produce a total of 354 megawatts of power.

Rich Diver, seen in the photo above, is a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories. Diver has developed a mirror alignment measurement device which should make these parabolic mirror solar collection systems more affordable and efficient. Diver's system, theoretical overly photographic (TOP) technology, is able to quickly and relatively easily evaluate the alignment of mirrors in a parabolic trough power plant and prescribe corrective measures.

The system has been tested at solar facilities at the Sandia National Solar Thermal Test Facility in Albuquerque and at a trough plant outside Tucson, Ariz. Later this year, the system will be tested at the Kramer Junction facility.

How's an environmentally minded shopper supposed to choose the right appliances, cars, electronics and home products for them? I'm not talking just about choosing energy efficient appliances, but appliances that are efficient and work well. Now, if you want to factor environmental issues into your shopping decisions, you can turn to GreenerChoices.org, from Consumer Reports. The site offers shopping guides along with tips on saving energy, recycling home electronics and other environmental issues.

Two Norwegian scientists, Karl Georg Hoyer and Erling Holden of Oslo University College and Western Norway Research Institute have conducted a study comparing 16 alternative fuels for transportation, ranking them according to energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and missions of local or regional pollutants. The researchers took into account every phase of the production and use of the fuel, known as wheel to well or cradle to grave. Subscribers can read the study at the International Journal of Alternative Propulsion.

The researchers found there is no "magic bullet" which will meet the world's transportation fuel demands. The best score in this study was achieved by hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles, with the hydrogen generated by natural gas. Gasoline powered vehicles were the lowest scoring.

Hoyer and Holden conclude that it is only a combination of using alternative fuels, substituting public transport, walking and biking for some transportation needs and reducing mobility that will work in the future beyond fossil fuels.

Do carbon offsets, in the form of tree planting, really work? They are at best a temporary, stopgap measure to reducing greenhouse gases and at worst, they do little but give the purchaser license to continue to live a high-emission lifestyle because they feel they're at least "doing something" about the problem of climate change.

Trees, as we've discussed here before, are not all created equal. Tropical trees are better than trees in higher latitudes at capturing carbon while trees at higher latitudes are either carbon neutral or, in some cases, actually contribute to global warming, according to researchers. Different species of trees are more effective at carbon capture than others.

Even in tropical areas, tree-planting isn't a long-term solution to global warming. Trees capture carbon as they grow, but once a forest is mature, most of it's carbon-sequestering potential is gone.

Even if I were an advocate for action on AGW (I don't advocate any position), I think I would have a hard time supporting carbon offsets. The potential for corruption is enormous and their benefits are difficult to quantify.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the process of sequestering carbon in soil through a process of heating biomass without oxygen to produce energy and biochar. Research at New South Wales Department of Primary Industries' Wollongbar Agricultural Institute in Australia has shown some of the potential this process holds.

The application of the char - referred to as agrichar in this article - to soil had a dramatic impact in enhancing soil fertility. Production was doubled and in one case - wheat - tripled, and the agrichar will sequester carbon in soil for hundreds of years.

Last week I wrote about Honda pulling the plug on the U.S. only hybrid Accord, a car which produced plenty of power, but not fantastic fuel economy. A day or two after making that post, I was doing a non-work-related search and came across Honda's clean-diesel Accord, which will be available in the U.S. by 2010. The power of a diesel engine, with a whopping 62.8 mpg highway fuel economy. SWEET!

Honda has sold diesel powered Accords in Europe for several years, but this new engine, announced last fall, meets even the most stringent emissions requirements in the United States, through the use of a NOx catalytic converter that "detoxifies" nitrogen oxide by turning it into nitrogen.

The lowly ice resurfacer has shown itself to be an excellent vehicle (pun intended) for demonstrating the potential of hydrogen power. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, developed at the University of North Dakota's Energy and Environmental Research Center, the eP-ICEBEAR is the world's first hydrogen-fuel-cell powered ice resurfacer.

Propane-powered models can cause a carbon monoxide buildup near the ice, a dangerous situation in a crowded, enclosed ice arena. This new fuel-cell powered model produces only plain water as an emission.

A new, on-line only Newsweek article talks about a different way to cut greenhouse emissions. Rather than imposing a gas tax or other form of carbon tax where the revenue reverts to the government - and they use it for who knows what - this method calls for setting up a "sky trust". Money raised in carbon "revenue" would be distributed as dividends to - all of us, as "owners" of the sky.

The benefit for lower income Americans? They'd see more money in their pockets to ease the burden higher carbon costs would bring. For middle-income Americans, the dividend would create roughly a wash.

Redistribution of wealth, anyone?

The Bush Administration would like to see more of the world relying on nuclear power for their energy needs.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

According to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, scientists in southern Idaho are trying to develop safer nuclear technology which could curb greenhouse gases, since nuclear power plants do not emit greenhouse gases. In terms of cost, "Nuclear is increasingly very competitive with all other choices, " according to John Grossenbacher, who is the Director of the government funded Idaho National Laboratory.

Currently, there are over 400 nuclear power plants throughout the world which provide 17% of the world's energy neeeds. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there would need to be 1000 new nuclear plants built worldwide in the next 50 years to make a dent in global warming. In the U.S., no new nuclear plants have been built in the past 30 years.

In addition to plant safety, one of the main arguments by environmentalists against the expansion of nuclear energy is the fact that the world is lacking a permanent repository for radioactive waste.

Speaking of safety, I see a 6.7 earthquake can cause some problems, which is kind of scary. An earthquake in Japan early Monday caused a nuclear plant to leak radioactive water into the bay. No more sushi for me!

What is your opinion about nuclear energy? Is it a real solution to global warming?

Power companies are planning to install "smart" meters in kitchens and/or living rooms to create a type of sticker shock that may lead to a conservation ethic which helps curb climate change. How would this work? Well, according to the article, "Juicing Down for Global Warming" in The Christian Science Monitor, the smart meters would show the customer the cost of their energy use per minute, and perhaps by the appliance. Having the meter practically right in your face would be like watching the dollars mount up on gas pump as you fill your car, giving you that sticker shock feeling, and making you more likely to cut back on your power hungary devices. During times of peak usage, such as during heat waves, utilities could have the option of adjusting your thermostat, resulting in a possible savings for the homeowner. One concern about the smart meter is the initial cost, which could be $200 just for the meter.

The U.S. Department of Energy is currently funding several projects that are studying the process of burying carbon dioxide, or otherwise known in the scientific world as geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide.

How does this work? According to the EPA, geologic sequestration is the process of injecting CO2 from a source such as a coal-fired electric generating power plant through a well into the deep subsurface. Once underground, the CO2 is sequestered or trapped for a long period of time.

One of those funded experiments is currently taking place on an old Texas oil field, where CO2 has been pumped underground over a longer period of time than anywhere on earth. So far, according to the Christian Science Monitor (through CBS News)the results have been promising, but there are risks. One of the risks is that too much pressure from the storage of CO2 far underground would cause earth tremors and force salty groundwater toward the surface.

Current estimates indicate a large storage capacity on earth for this process, which could permanently hold at least two centuries worth of CO2 emissions or 6 billion tons a year.

In a survey just released by the X Prize Foundation, Americans see the development of 100 mpg cars as one of the most powerful ideas for combating global warming and reducing the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The idea of a tax credit for solar and wind power was the next best idea.

The survey also stated that 62% of Americans have a strong interest in purchasing the yet to be built 100 mpg car, while the cost of owning this vehicle was the greatest concern by people who did not want to own such a car.

There was also a question in regards to what the prime benefit would be in owning such a car. Men saw the greatest benefit as saving gas, while a majority of women thought that the main benefit would be in reducing pollution and global warming.

I get the feeling that this survey was clearly a limited multiple choice, since the foundation just happens to be planning to hold a multi-million dollar prize competition to see who can build a 100 mpg car. Regardless, the results are somewhat interesting, especially the one broken down by men and women.

The idea of pumping sulphur particles into the atmosphere as a last-ditch solution to global warming might have hit a snag, according to a pair of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

This process is supposed to reproduce the cooling effect of a large eruption by sending sulphate particles into the stratosphere. The particles, otherwise known as "sulphur sunshade" reflect some of the sun's radiation back into space, which in turn reduces the amount of heat that reaches the planet, according to the article in NewScientist.

In the study, Kevin Trenberth and Aiguo Dai show that "sulphur sunshade" would have catastrophic effects on the planet's water cycle and lead to widespread drought. They cite the post-eruption of Mount Pinatubo from 1991 as one example where rainfall and run-off was significantly reduced.

A scientist from New Mexico Tech proposes that fertilizing the oceans could offset some of the global warming caused by greenhouse gases.

How would this work? Ocean growing plankton would thrive from the fertilization process, giving off more dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which when emitted into the atmosphere, would help spur cloud formation. The increased cloud cover would help reduce some of the solar heating at the surface which would counteract some of the global warming.

This idea seems like a big stretch to me in terms of workability, as they would probably need a tremendous amount of fertilizer to cover such a large area in order to produce the necessary amount of DMS. How often would you need to fertilize? How much energy would they need to produce the fertilizer and distribute it across the oceans? Also, how would the fertilizer impact other ocean life? Now I think I understand why Wingenter has struggled to win any funding to further pursue this idea......suspected cost of additional research and the potential huge cost of executing the project. Still, I give Wingenter and his colleagues credit for coming up with the interesting idea. Solutions to many of our problems must first start with ideas.

What do you think of this idea and some of the others discussed in this article from
The Houston Chronicle?

I read a pretty good article today from the Wall Street Journal titled "Climate Change's Great Divide". The author of the article, Deborah Solomon points out the political battle over climate change is not necessarily a Republican versus Democrat issue, but more of the economists versus the politicians.

The article points out that most politicians favor a carbon cap-and-trade system, which would set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions and require companies to obtain permits to release CO2 into the air. On the other hand, you have the economists who tend to favor a tax on carbon emissions. Politicians, even some liberals fear political back lash against new fees (taxes), which is no surprise.

The article lists some of the pros and cons of both systems......

Cap-Trade supporters
-Better incentive to cut emissions because companies can sell excess permits.

Cap-trade critics
-It would reward big polluters if it bases its allotment of permits on how much industries emit now.
-Spark a lobbying frenzy. (like we don't have that already?)
-Caps would probably function much like a tax, levying new costs on business
that would be passed to the consumer.

Tax supporters
-Encourage developing technologies that produce less carbon.

Tax critics
-Harsh impact on the poor.

Solomon notes that most political momentum appears to be behind the cap-and-trade
system. Later this month, Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Warner (R-VA) will unveil
a new cap-and-trade bill.

I read an interesting commentary in the New York Times online in support of the carbon tax. I did a post last week about the differences between the carbon tax and the cap-and-trade system.

In his commentary, N. Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard University proposes using the revenue from a carbon tax to reduce other taxes. This is on the idea of a Pigovian tax, which was named in honor of early 20th century British Economist Arthur Pigou, whose idea was to use taxes to fix problems rather than merely raising government revenue.

Mankiw argues that a carbon tax would provide incentives for people to use less fuel in a multitude of ways, while having more costly efficient cars just encourages more driving, which leads to more carbon output.

In my earlier post, in addition to this commentary, it was mentioned that one of the drawbacks to a carbon tax would be that it would hurt the poor and middle class. Gilbert Metcalf, a Tufts University Professor has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged.You can read more about that from the link above.

Mankiw is currently an advisor to Mitt Romney and a former advisor to President Bush.

In a 300 word letter to the editor published in Nature, James Lovelock, author of the Gaia Theory and Chris Rapley, director of the London Science Museum believe that the use of huge pumps installed in the ocean could help reduce global warming or as they said, be an "emergency treatment for the pathology of global warming." This is not peer-reviewed research.

How would this controversial idea work?

Large vertical pipes would mix nutrient rich waters from hundreds of metres down with the more barren waters at the surface. This process would supposedly lead to algal blooms at the surface, which would consume CO2 through photosynthesis. When the algae dies, some of the carbon sinks to the deeper waters. According to the nature.com article, algae also produces certain chemicals that enhance cloud cover, which also has a cooling effect on the planet in certain circumstances.

A similar idea using a wave-driven ocean upwelling system to absorb CO2 is being developed by Atmocean, a company based out of Sante Fe, New Mexico. Each one of their pump-driven systems measures 300 metres long by 3 metres diameter. The company believes that if their system can be deployed across 80% of the world's oceans an additional 2 billion tonnes of carbon can be brought down to the ocean floor per year, potentially doubling the ocean's annual rate of CO2 sequestration. My question is how many of these pumps would be needed? I would think you would need a massive number. Costs of deployment, weather factors and mechanical failure/repair could be big issues to deal with as well in my opinion.

Some scientists believe that artificial mixing could release more CO2.

Scott Doney, a marine chemist from WHOI said that the higher nutrient deeper waters of the oceans contain a lot of dissolved inorganic carbon and dissolved CO2, and that bringing these waters to the lower pressures of the surface would "bubble" out additional CO2 into the atmosphere.

Others believe there would be no real effect on the climate from artificial mixing and even wonder if this process could harm sea life.

NRG Energy Inc. CEO David Crane said Tuesday that cutting emissions from coal-fired power plants needs to be at the center of addressing global climate change. "The centerpiece of any global warming effort has to be getting carbon out of coal," said Crane. Certainly not the type of statement you would expect to hear from someone whose own direct interests are with these same coal-fired power plants, but actions speak much more than words, as the saying goes.

Crane told a group of students that if they could find a method of removing carbon from flue gas they could end up saving the world with the added benefit of becoming a billionaire. Flue gas is a post-combustion gas emitted from pipes and chimneys, according to the article from Reuters.

Crane said it's the U.S. government that has to take the leading role in promoting research and development for technology that would cut carbon emissions.

In addition to being a strong advocate of "clean coal" technology, Crane and NRG are looking to build two nuclear energy plants in Texas and develop wind farms in Texas and California. He is even testing technology that uses algae to capture CO2 emissions at fossil fuel plants as stated in an earlier piece from CNNMoney.com

By the way, NRG Energy has plans to build another traditional coal-fired power plant in Texas, but the company does not feel "overly good" about it.

David Schnare, a senior environmental Fellow at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy doesn't really care whether global warming is man-made or a natural cycle, all he knows is that the temperature is going up and we need to find a way to fix the problem. In an article from the Washington Times, Schnare and others believe that geo-engineering can fix the problem much cheaper than efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Schnare, a geo-engineering method of using aerosols to put small reflective particles into the troposphere would stabilize global temperatures just enough to prevent melting glaciers and thus prevent a rise in ocean levels. Nature has a similar way of cooling the planet with major volcanic eruptions and the ash they send high into the atmosphere.

Other scientists fear geo-engineering schemes may do more harm than good and widespread drought is a big concern. Past large volcanic eruptions such as Mount Pinatubo (1991, remember those brilliant red skies in the evening?) caused a substantial global decrease in precipitation over land, a record decrease in runoff and river discharge into the oceans, according to Kevin Trenberth and Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

What do you think? Is it worth the risk?

Update*****David Schnare responds to the Accuweather,com Global Warming Center,,,,,,,,,

I'm not an AGW or anything else in particular, although I have a PhD in environmental science and happen to be burdened with a law degree too. I started out as a chemist. In any case, I simply begin with the apparency that temperatures are going up and that if you adopt the assumption that it is caused by GHG, then you also have to accept the fact that the world is not acting quickly enough to reduce GHGs to the degree necessary to reduce global temperatures before melting of the greenland ice sheet (all according to the models and assumptions used by those concerned with GHGs).

As for undesirable effects of using particulates in the stratosphere (not the troposphere), Ken Caldeira (Standford) took a very hard look at this and concluded that if the particulates are placed above the arctic (where they would be needed to prevent ice sheet melt), there is no discernable change in local weather patterns elsewhere on the planet and apparently not much change in the arctic.

All this does not imply we should do nothing about moving away from carbon based fuels. Just that we don't need to do so in some kind of crisis mode. David Schnare.

In the courts..........

Also, an update on an ongoing court issue. A parent in England has failed through legal action to prevent Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth from being shown in English schools, according to the Guardian Unlimited, but the high court said the film must be distributed with new guidance notes for students/teachers to prevent any promotion of partisan political views.

A Pentagon-chartered report says that space-based solar power (SBSP) has the potential to help the United States mitigate global warming and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the sun's power through space platforms, which would essentially provide and inexhaustible supply of clean energy, and reduce the need for greenhouse gas producing power plants. I found this story on Space.com.

How would this work? Huge satellites would be built in Earth orbit to gather sunlight and convert it to electricity and beam the energy to earth using microwaves, according to Al Globus from Space.com. Read his article for greater details on this idea.

Although the U.S. military would reap tremendous benefits from space-based solar power on the battlefield, U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Paul Damphousse said the Pentagon is unlikely to fund development and demonstration of the technology. That role, he said, would be more appropriate for NASA or the Department of Energy, both of which have studied SBSP in the past.

Damphousse, however, cautioned that the private sector will not invest in space-based solar power until the United States buys down some of the risk through a technology development and demonstration effort at least on par with what the government spends on nuclear fusion research and perhaps as much as it is spending to construct and operate the international space station, as stated in the Space.com article.

While the upfront costs are steep, former NASA technologist John Mankins and others said space-based solar power's potential to meet the world's future energy needs is huge.

Researchers are proposing a new method of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), according to an article from ScienceDaily. It involves the large-scale construction of water treatment plants which would enhance the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The researchers from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania believe that 100 of these plants could cause a 15% reduction in CO2 emissions over many years, while 700 plants could offset all CO2 emissions.

How would this work? The water treatment plants would remove hydrochloric acid from the ocean by electrolysis and neutralize the acid through reactions with silicate minerals or rocks. This reaction increases the alkalinity of the ocean and its ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

The journal article, "Electrochemical Acceleration of Chemical Weathering as an Energetically Feasible Approach to Mitigating Anthropogenic Climate Change," is scheduled to appear in the Dec. 15 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology.

I wonder how big these treatment plants would have to be, certainly not on the scale of your ordinary home town treatment plant.

With predictions that more than 3.5 billion people could be living in areas with severe water shortages by 2025 because of climate change, desertification and overpopulation there will need to be a more efficient and less expensive way to remove the salt from seawater. A group of scientists from India believe that nuclear desalination is the answer.

"Nuclear energy seawater desalination has a tremendous potential for the production of freshwater," according to Meenaleshi Jain of CDM and Environmental Services and Positive Climate Care Pvt. Ltd in Jaipur.

How would this work?

Floating nuclear plants would represent a way to produce electrical energy, with minimal environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Plants could be sited well offshore anywhere there is dense coastal population. In addition to providing cheap electricity, the nuclear plants would also power a desalination plant with their excess heat, according to S.S. Verma from SLIET.

The article from Water Online also noted........

A. Raha and colleagues at the Desalination Division of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, in Trombay, point out that Low-Temperature Evaporation (LTE) desalination technology utilizing low-quality waste heat in the form of hot water (as low as 50 Celsius) or low-pressure steam from a nuclear power plant has been developed to produce high-purity water directly from seawater. Safety, reliability, viable economics, have already been demonstrated. BARC itself has recently commissioned a 50 tons per day low-temperature desalination plant.

Co-editor of the journal, B.M. Misra, formerly head of BARC, suggests that solar, wind, and wave power, while seemingly cost effective approaches to desalination, are not viable for the kind of large-scale fresh water production that an increasingly industrial and growing population needs.

Researchers at Stanford and Oregon State Universities have determined that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, contrary to earlier beliefs. Adding iron and other nutrients to produce large algae blooms in the ocean, which would absorb carbon dioxide has been a well known possible solution to global warming and has been talked about on this blog several times. According to the ScienceDaily article, this process only reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide if the carbon absorbed into the algae sinks to deeper waters, which scientists call the "biological pump." The theory of the process is that the more algae in bloom the more carbon is transported from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, via the "biological pump."

Here's where it gets interesting, during the process of testing the theory the researchers determined that there are clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance and carbon sinking rates. But one thing about this relationship caught the research team by surprise, and it was that less carbon was transported to deep water during summertime bloom than the rest of the year!

"This discovery is very surprising", said lead author Dr. Michael Lutz, now at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "If, during natural plankton blooms, less carbon actually sinks to deep water than during the rest of the year, then it suggests that the Biological Pump leaks.

More material is recycled in shallow water and less sinks to depth, which makes sense if you consider how this ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss", said Lutz. "Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested because they ignore the natural processes revealed by this research."

The study concludes that greatly enhanced carbon sequestration should not be expected no matter the location or duration of proposed large-scale ocean fertilization experiments.

This study is no doubt a win for environmentalists, who had major concerns about a large-scale project such as this. Maybe even some taxpayer relief as well!

The U.S. Department of Energy, along with a consortium of midwestern companies unveiled the first carbon dioxide injection well in the country Thursday. The experimental well, located in Michigan will sequester the gas 3,700 feet underground in porous rock.

The well is already taking carbon dioxide from a nearby DTE natural gas-burning power plant.

According to the report from the Detroit Free Press, the start of this project could open the door to a storehouse that could accomadate all the carbon dioxide from every Michigan power plant and many surrounding states for hundreds of years, especially since the deep sandstone layers of Michigan are perfect for safely and permanently storing carbon dioxide.