Environment World

I can’t escape it, I’m scared of the future. I tried to go about as if nothing is happening, much like everyone else but I still find it interesting to see the demise of western civilization. I happened on this article, Biofuels make greenhouse gases worse, scientists say. The article has this quote which I think sums it up.

There should be more focus on producing biofuels from municipal waste and from land that can’t be used for food crops, said Alex Ferrell, an energy and resource professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Soil and plants are essential stores of carbon, containing more than the atmosphere, he said.

We’re not going to find easy solutions but we have to see the whole picture.

Now back to regularly scheduled program …

Technorati Tags: bioofuels, global warming, municipal waste

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I know some people who don’t agree with global warming but I think the evidence is getting too strong for any reasonable human being to disagree with it any longer but I never under estimate the blinder people put on their thinking.

In January, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reported that 2006 was the warmest year on record over the 48 contiguous states with an average temperature 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal and 0.07 degree warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record….At the time the agency said it was not clear how much of the warming was a result of greenhouse-gas induced climate change and how much resulted from the El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that was under way.”We wanted to find out whether it was pure coincidence that the two warmest years on record both coincided with El Nino events,” Martin Hoerling of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said in a statement.

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Wired Science - Wired Blogs

Wow! If your not a scientist then that’s all you can say when you read this, I”m sure there wil be a lot of fighting in the U.S. before there’s any available there. You haven’t read the article so I’ll give you a summary before you read the link (like always)

Instead of mixing the ingredients and heating them for hours, the chemical engineers pass sunflower oil and methanol through a bed of pellets made from fungal spores….Last Monday, Ravichandra Potumarthi showed off his work during a poster session at the International Conference on Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. After returning to his lab in Hyderabad, he was able to send out some pictures of his experimental reactor (shown on right) and the fungal pellets.Typically, biodiesel is made by mixing methanol with lye and vegetable oil and then heating the brew for several hours….Considering that a handful of chemical engineers can accomplish so much on what appears to be a shoestring budget, the future of alternative fuels looks pretty good — but maybe a bit slimy.

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Greenfleet - Projects

I had a thought (it happens sometimes), we need to pressure our local governments to not only clean up but to plant some trees. It makes things beautiful, cleans up the air, and gives the environment some stability. Australia and the US have huge tracts of land doing nothing.

A Low Impact Woodland Home

What a great idea, design, and motivatin.  Inthe near future we may HAVE to live in enviromental friendly homes, does your or mine cut the mustard.

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Wired News - AP News

We’re making a difference to the environment, we got aways to go but things are looking better. Remember, the next time you should meet a ferret be cordial, give them the same respect when we don’t fuck with them, wemay end needing some help later.

Space travel doesn’t spring to mind when thinking of climate change that we see everyday but there’s alot of CO being pumped into the air for each launch. I do agree we must get into space cheaply and safely to put those things we need up there like a solar power plant (just an idea I’ve had). In the article it talks about remotely powering the elevator, if we can do that why not some solar panels to give us some clean power.

I’ve posted about China in the past but with the Olympics coming up there is a real urgency to clean up the place before everyone becomes ill. I hope they’re up to the challenge.

But on a bad day — come August, say, when temperatures approach 100 degrees — the atmosphere around Beijing becomes a photochemical bouillabaisse of coal smog, steel-mill spume, and tailpipe crud, mingled with concrete dust and baked in the oven formed by the surrounding hills.

I have tried to put the burden of Global Warming to the environment but it always comes back to US (not the U.S. but us). Here’s another nail in that coffin and it tells me we got to move on this NOW! Here is the summary of that article that hopefully shuts up the naysayers and get over the complaints about the need for alt energy including nuclear.

Sun1 Last week I blogged here about the lack of evidence that cosmic rays cause global warming. Now another argument against human-created global warming has been found lacking: that the Sun’s increasing energy output is raising temperatures here on Earth.

This is an incredible series of concerts at Live Earth, check it out you’ll love it. After this is the pledge that Al Gore has asked everyone to follow:

1. Demand that my country join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth.

2. Take personal action to help solve the climate crises by reducing my own C02 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become “carbon neutral”.

3. Fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the C02.

4. Work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation.

5. Fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal.

6. Plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests.

7. Buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crises and building a sustainable, just and prosperous world for the 21st century.

This where to go commit to the pledge SOS | Live Earth | 7.7.07