tagged w/ Carbon Emissions
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Following years of intense pressure from the agribusiness sector, Brazil's parliament has approved destructive reforms to the country's forest protection. President Dilma has just 9 remaining days to veto this hatchet job before it becomes law. With the world watching, which side of history will she choose to be on? Will her legacy be Amazon ruin? Or, will she demonstrate courage and act on behalf of future generations?
This article appeared in the New York Times today.
YOU can urge President Dilma to do the right thing for Brazil, the Amazon and the planet.
Take action now by signing this petition, tell her to veto the new Forest Code!
More at the linkFollowing years of intense pressure from the agribusiness sector, Brazil's... more
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http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/05/10/opinion/0510OPEDselman.html
GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climatehttp://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/05/10/opinion/0510OPEDselman.html
GLOBAL... more
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Karina Pinasco watched in dismay as flames on a hillside at the edge of town lit up the sky one night in October 2010. A farmer had intended to clear a few hectares of land to plant coffee bushes, but the fire – set during an unusually hot, dry spell – quickly got out of hand.
Propelled by winds and high temperatures, it burned for 10 days, charring more than 250 acres of land.
"We realized we weren't prepared," says Pinasco, a biologist who heads Amazónicos por la Amazonía, a local environmental organization. "The firefighters weren't trained. It was the rain that finally put it out."
Scientists used to think the rainforest, especially in the western Amazon, was too wet to burn. But major fire seasons in 2005 and 2010 made them reconsider.
Fires are a major source of carbon emissions in the Amazon, and scientists are beginning to worry that the region could become a net emitter, instead of a carbon sink. New findings link rising ocean temperatures off the northern coast of Brazil to changing weather patterns: As the Atlantic warms, it draws moisture away from the forest, priming the region for bigger fires.
"We are reaching a tipping point in terms of drought, beyond which these forests can catch fire," says Daniel Nepstad, international program director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brasília, Brazil.
Once-a-century no more
The 2005 drought – considered a once-in-a-century event – resulted in unprecedented wildfires in Acre, the western Brazilian state bordering Peru. Flames scorched the tree canopy, and at one point the front face of the fire stretched nearly seven miles. As many as 1.2 million acres of forests were affected in Acre and the neighboring regions of Pando in Bolivia and Madre de Dios in Peru. Officials estimated upwards of $100 million in economic damages.
But the forest loss wasn't the only concern for the Acre state government, said Foster Brown, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center and a professor at the Federal University of Acre in Rio Branco, the state capital. Choking smoke spiked respiratory ailments in the region and canceled flights.
Just five years later, another once-a-century drought struck, and fires spread out of control, especially in Acre, Bolivia's Pando region and Brazil's Mato Grosso state. Acre was better prepared, but in Bolivia, smoke from more than 20,000 fires reduced visibility and shut airports in several towns. The Bolivian government declared a state of emergency as more than 3.5 million acres of forest burned. In Mato Grosso, fires destroyed at least 100 homes.
Gigatons of carbon
The 2005 fires added 1.6 gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere, according to a study by Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds, who put emissions from the more widespread 2010 fires at 2.2 gigatons.
In a normal year, the Amazon forests store 0.4 gigatons of carbon a year in the trees and soil, meaning that two bad seasons like 2005 and 2010 could wipe out a decade of gain, according to Lewis' calculations.
And as humans push further into an increasingly drier Amazon, the problem could worsen.
In the western Amazon, humans are the chief source of sparks. With new roads being built and paved through once-inaccessible areas, Peru's Amazonian regions now have some of the country's highest population growth rates. Many of the newcomers clear a little land to farm, and where there are farms, there is fire.
Fire risks
In the Amazon, where weeds and insects run rampant, burning is the most cost-effective way for small farmers to control ticks in cattle pastures and unwanted plants in cassava fields, says Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, director of international programs for the Columbia University Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, who also works with the Center for International Forestry Research.
More at the linkKarina Pinasco watched in dismay as flames on a hillside at the edge of town lit up... more
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Anyone have a top ten list of reasons why carbon emissions spiked this past year? I can't think of anything for some reason.
If Al Gore is no longer running for office, then people no longer have to recycle?
If there is no climate change movie sequel, then the problem must have gone away? That's two possible reasons...
http://blog.algore.com/2011/12/59.htmlAnyone have a top ten list of reasons why carbon emissions spiked this past year? I... more
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The ocean is a delicate place, and tiny changes to its composition can cause serious devastation.
Adding carbon to the atmosphere contributes to global warming and climate change. Another less-discussed impact is ocean acidification—whereby carbon molecules diffuse into the ocean from the atmosphere, causing a steady rise in acidity—even though the impacts are already being felt by many species.
The beautiful blue sea slug, seen here, is one such creature. Blue sea slugs feed on the poisonous Portuguese man of war jellyfish, meaning that an ocean without them would be an ocean with a lot more stinging jellyfish.
This is 1: Blue Sea Slug
More at the link
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The link to humans and the food chain each of these species represents should make people understand just how acidification is affecting us as well.The ocean is a delicate place, and tiny changes to its composition can cause serious... more
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In a major advance for concerned citizens, the Obama administration has unveiled an interactive website that displays the thousands of major greenhouse gas polluters across the United States. The new site, at ghgdata.epa.gov, features a Google map and charts driven by the greenhouse gas reporting database of facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of greenhouse pollution. The EPA established the rule requiring this reporting in 2009, in response to a law passed under George W. Bush at the end of 2007.
This comprehensive and well-designed site, developed by the government contractor SAIC, makes it easy to find out facts like:
The top carbon polluter in America is the Scherer mega-coal plant in Juliette, Georgia.
The ten most polluting coal plants produce a combined 188 million tons of greenhouse pollution a year.
Kansas has 103 reporting greenhouse polluters.
There are only two major emitters of highly dangerous HFC pollution in the United States, a Dupont plant in Louisville and a Honeywell plant in Baton Rouge.
People can also download the underlying data set for their own analysis.
The site does not display greenhouse pollution from the transportation or agribusiness sectors. The omission of the pollution from the millions of cars across America makes sense, but the exclusion of industrial agriculture pollution is a loophole inserted by Congress to protect the dangerous business model of Big Ag.In a major advance for concerned citizens, the Obama administration has unveiled an... more
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The wind up is a small gadget with big uses. This seemingly normal handle is a device designed to power any electrical appliance by simply winding it up. Tipped to become the century’s most important invention preventing trillions of units of carbon emissions from polluting the air, reports suggest the wind up could reverse the effects of global warming within our lifetime.The wind up is a small gadget with big uses. This seemingly normal handle is a device... more
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, struggling with an ambitious agenda on clean air regulations, said it will delay proposing the country's first-ever greenhouse gas limits on oil refineries.
The delay is the latest setback for the agency's new raft of clean air rules on everything from smog to mercury pollution that are heavily opposed by industry.
The EPA had been required to propose the rules on refineries by mid-December, as part of a court settlement with states and environmental groups.
"EPA expects to need more time to complete work on greenhouse gas pollution standards for oil refineries," a spokeswoman for the agency said. The EPA is working with the litigants to develop a new schedule to replace the current mid-December date for a rule proposal, she added.
The EPA made the comments after sources on both sides of the issue told Reuters the agency would not make the deadline.
The EPA has not told refiners exactly how it plans to cut emissions, and that figuring out how to do so is taking additional time, an oil industry source said.
"How they are going to regulate greenhouse gases, they are not sharing that with us," the source said.
The petroleum industry says it is more difficult to cut emissions from refineries than it is from power plants, the EPA's top target of emissions. Many power utilities can switch from coal, which emits large amounts of carbon dioxide when burned, to burning cleaner natural gas. Refineries, however, mostly already run on natural gas, they argue.
Tough rules on greenhouse gas emissions could add expenses to companies including Exxon Mobil Corp, Valero Energy Corp, and ConocoPhillips.
But refiners can easily cut emissions -- and save money, a source with one of the litigants said. They can do so by replacing inefficient boilers, installing better valves to reduce leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and by generating power with "waste heat" given off at the plants.
The delays on greenhouse gas plans come after President Barack Obama forced the EPA in September to delay new limits on smog emissions until 2013, saying it was part of an effort to reduce regulatory burdens on business.
That decision came as Republicans in the House of Representatives complained about EPA's raft of new clean air regulations, saying they would kill jobs and add expenses to businesses as they struggle with the weak economy.
RECORD EMISSIONS
The delay comes as time may be running out for world efforts to control global warming emissions. Concentrations of carbon dioxide and two other greenhouse gases reached record levels last year and will linger in the atmosphere for decades, even if the world halts output of the gases today, the World Meteorological Organization, the U.N.'s weather agency, said on Monday.
The United States is sticking with Obama's pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. But a comprehensive energy and climate bill failed in the Senate last year, leaving emissions control largely to agencies including the EPA and the Department of Transportation. Last week those agencies proposed doubling auto fuel efficiency.
Meanwhile, U.S. CO2 emissions from energy sources last year rose nearly 4 percent as factories ran harder and as consumers boosted air conditioning during the hot summer.
The EPA has also delayed proposing a plan on reducing emissions from power plants, which are the country's single largest source of emissions blamed for warming the planet.
Those rules were initially delayed in June and again in September. Last week Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, said the plan on power plants would be rolled out early next year.
It was unclear if the EPA would also miss the deadline to finalize the rules on refineries by mid-November, 2012.
More at the linkThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, struggling with an ambitious agenda on clean... more
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India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan were part of the Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas held in Bhutan's capital Thimphu on Saturday. They agreed to cooperate on energy, water, food and biodiversity issues.
"The success of our initiative will not only have direct and immediate benefits for our own people, but we could be setting a worthy precedent for other countries that share similar conditions," Bhutan's Prime Minister Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y. Thinley said according to a press statement released late Saturday.
Pakistan, China and Afghanistan were absent from the summit but organizers downplayed that, saying that the summit was focused on securing ecosystems, endangered species,and food and water sources for only the Himalayas' eastern part.
The summit called for action amid the international community's inability to agree on limiting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global climate change. The next round of U.N. climate talks begin in Durban, South Africa Nov. 28, but the expectations of any breakthrough there are limited.
As part of the declaration the four nations agreed to work together to increase access to "affordable and reliable" clean energy resources and technology through a regional knowledge sharing mechanism, a press statement from the World Wildlife Fund said.
The draft of the declaration was not immediately available Sunday.
The most contentious part of the talks dealt with water security, according to the WWF release, but the four nations did agree to work together on ecosystem and disaster management, sharing their knowledge in water use efficiency.
Regional tensions have long prevented Himalayan cooperation, including basic research in the world's largest block of glaciers outside the polar regions, and accounting for 40 percent of the world's fresh water.
There was also consensus on food security and securing livelihoods and the deal covers way to adapt and improve food production and help vulnerable communities get better access to nutritious food.
"These kinds of regional initiatives are really needed," said Liisa Rohweder, CEO of WWF Finland, adding the summit was a good lead to follow for the Durban meeting.India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan were part of the Climate Summit for a Living... more
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With the Keystone XL pipeline on hold, the giant companies tapping Canada’s oil sands will turn to Plan B — existing pipelines to the United States.
Those pipelines, which now carry slightly more than 1 million barrels a day from Canada’s oil sands to the United States, can be expanded by adding pumping stations. Some companies, notably Enbridge, already have plans to boost the capacity of their lines and speed the journey of crude from Alberta to Texas.
.“It’s inevitable that it will get here. This oil will have to find a market,” said Fadel Gheit, oil analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. “All these competing pipelines are going to rethink their strategy.”
That would disappoint foes of the Keystone XL pipeline, who hope that the delay or defeat of the project would impede the growth in output from the oil sands, whose exploitation releases 5 to 15 percent more greenhouse gases than the average crude used in the United States.
Asked what the Keystone delay would mean for oil sands development, a spokesman for Chevron, which owns 20 percent of one of the oil sands projects, said: “The Keystone decision has no implications for Chevron.”
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers forecasts that oil sands output will nearly double from 1.5 million barrels a day in 2010 to 2.9 million barrels a day by 2020. Proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline warned that a rejection of the project would lead to exports to China via a pipeline to Canada’s west coast, or shipments to the United States using barges, trucks and railroads, thus creating a larger carbon footprint.
Many Canadians prefer a pipeline to be built from Alberta to eastern Canada, which still imports oil from Saudi Arabia.
But oil analysts said Friday that existing pipelines to the United States offer the easiest and most likely fallback plans.
Enbridge is a likely choice for oil companies seeking additional pipeline space over the next two or three years. The company’s 1,000-mile long Alberta Clipper line, which went into operation last year, goes from Hardesty, Alberta, to Superior, Wis., and has an initial capacity of 450,000 barrels a day. But it can be pushed up to 800,000 barrels a day, the company says. That alone would make up for half of the capacity Keystone XL would have added.
more at the linkWith the Keystone XL pipeline on hold, the giant companies tapping Canada’s oil... more
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The South African Civil Society Information Service (www.sacsis.org.za)
Environmental debates never escape the proverbial slip of the tongue about the planet having too many people.The South African Civil Society Information Service (www.sacsis.org.za)
Environmental... more
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No one likes climbing into a freezing car with frosty windows. But allowing your car to “warm up” while you continue your morning routine wastes money and sends pounds of climate change-causing emissions into the atmosphere.
Click on the link above for more efficient ways to heat your car (and yourself!)No one likes climbing into a freezing car with frosty windows. But allowing your car... more
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This week, the League of Conservation Voters released polling by the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies demonstrating very strong support for EPA efforts to reduce global warming pollution. They found:
Fully 71 percent indicate support for requiring reductions in carbon emissions, including a solid majority of Republican voters….
Despite the rhetoric coming from most of the Republican presidential candidates, this poll demonstrates what previous research has consistently shown: Americans across the country – including Republican voters – trust the EPA to limit global warming pollution,” said LCV Senior Vice President of Campaigns Navin Nayak.
These results are consistent with over a dozen polls taken in the last 2 years (see Poll (6/11): Independents — and Even Republicans — are Still Concerned About Global Warming and Overwhelmingly Support Clean Energy Development and links below). Here’s more detail:
Support for “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requiring reductions in carbon emissions from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming pollution” is wide-spread and broad-based. Majorities of a wide range of key voter sub-groups support this, including:
*Among Republicans (55 percent support), Independents (72 percent support), and Democrats (89 percent support); and
*Among viewers of CNN (87 percent support), MSNBC (86 percent support), ABC/CBS/NBC (81 percent support), and Fox News (49 percent support).
more at link...This week, the League of Conservation Voters released polling by the Republican firm... more
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A star is born. And, less than a second later, it dies. On a drab science park just outside the Oxfordshire village of Culham, some of the world's leading physicists stare at a monitor to review a video of their wondrous, yet fleeting, creation.
"Not too bad. That was quite a clean one," observes starmaker-in-chief Professor Steve Cowley. Just a few metres away from his control room, a "mini star" not much larger than a family car has just burned, momentarily bright, at temperatures approaching 23 million degrees centigrade inside a 70-tonne steel vessel.
Cowley sips his coffee. "OK, when do we go again?"
Last year, when asked to name the most pressing scientific challenge facing humanity, Professors Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox both gave the same answer: producing electricity from fusion energy. The prize, they said, is enormous: a near-limitless, pollution-free, cheap source of energy that would power human development for many centuries to come. Cox is so passionate about the urgent need for fusion power that he stated that it should be scientists such as Cowley who are revered in our culture – not footballers or pop stars – because they are "literally going to save the world". It is a "moral duty" to commercialise this technology as fast as possible, he said. Without it, our species will be in "very deep trouble indeed" by the end of this century.
Read the full article at the linkA star is born. And, less than a second later, it dies. On a drab science park just... more
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pdy
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The Murdoch media, the shock jocks and TV breakfast shows and much of the other mainstream media are obviously too scared to leave home at night as a result of the carbon tax fear and loathing they’ve been spreading. Perhaps it's the dreaded bird-brain flu.
Or ironically it may have just been Melbourne University’s cold winter evening that kept them away. One way or the other they missed out on lots of sensational footage when Professor Hans Joachin Schellnhuber gave his public address for the FOUR DEGREES OR MORE? Australia in a Hot World conference.The Murdoch media, the shock jocks and TV breakfast shows and much of the other... more
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Australians remain divided after Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of a Clean Energy package with a carbon price of $A 23 per tonne and an emissions trading scheme from 2015. Crikey had an early summary. The local blogosphere was quick off the mark.Australians remain divided after Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of... more
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L’Oréal released its 2010 Sustainable Development Report on June 10, which it published as an integrated website. The cosmetics company has set big goals, which include the goal to “win the trust and confidence of a billion new consumers in the next 10 years.” L’Oreal also has targets for 2015 to reduce by 50 percent its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, waste and water consumption per finished product.
A chart in the report lists what L’Oreal has accomplished so far to meet its 2015 goals, which include reducing carbon emissions by 27 percent since 2005, and sulfur dioxide emissions by 83.3 percent. L’Oreal decreased energy use per 1,000 finished products by 9.2 percent, water use per unit of finished product by six percent, and waste generated with returnable packaging per unit of finished product by 7,4 percent. A total of 961 percent of waste was reused, recycled or recovered for energy last year. More than 50 percent of L’Oreal’s industrial sites sent no waste to landfills.
The report lists the number of awards received by L’Oreal for its sustainability measures, which includes being named by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the “Most Ethical Companies.” L’Oreal was chosen among 1,000s of companies in over 100 countries and 36 industry sectors after an in-depth survey and several stages of evaluation. L’Oreal also placed first in the Innovative Reporting category of the Ethical Corporation awards
Full Story: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/06/loreal-big-sustainability-goals/L’Oréal released its 2010 Sustainable Development Report on June 10,... more
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Climate change is only going to get crazier, because of our existing dependence on resource like oil. We can't change because our existing technology totally relies on oil. We've dug the whole and we can't get out of it and we just keep digging...Climate change is only going to get crazier, because of our existing dependence on... more
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Technology the impactor. How could it be? Carbon runs wild,in the land of the free?
Short animated vid on human impacts to planet: Technology the impactor. How could it be? Carbon runs wild,in the land of the free?
Category: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQeQeHT8P78Technology the impactor. How could it be? Carbon runs wild,in the land of the free?... more
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Gore's cleantech fund to finance Tigo Energy Inc., which develops solutions to maximize output by photovoltaic installations.
Tigo Energy Inc. has raised $10 million in its third financing round plus a $10 million credit line from Climate Solutions Fund LP, managed Generation Investment Management LLP, whose chairman is former US Vice President Al Gore. Tigo develops solutions to maximize output by photovoltaic installations.
Tigo CEO Sam Arditi and president and COO Ran Hadar founded the company in 2007. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has a development center in Kfar Saba with 30 employees.
Hadar told "Globes" today that demand is rising for its products, and that proceeds from the financing round would be used to increase production capacity and the company's global sales and marketing network.
The investment from Climate Solutions Fund brings the amount of capital raised by Tigo to $40 million. The company's previous investors are Israel's Clal Energy Ltd. and Israel Cleantech Ventures Funds), Matrix Partners and OVP Venture Partners of the US, and Taiwan's Inventec Appliances Corporation.
Hadar said, "Generation Investment is one of the world's largest cleantech funds, and it recognizes the importance of the electronics of solar energy systems and the growth potential of the sector. The fresh capital will enable us to pick up the pace of our business and greatly expand our product development and production in order to expand our marketing. The investment also demonstrates the recognition of our technology and vision to be at the industry's forefront."
Tigo's product, the Maximizer boosts power output of photovoltaic systems of any size from residential to utility scale by up to 20% by reducing the effects of shade, dust, clouds and uneven temperature on system performance. Israeli engineers developed the technology.
Hadar added, "Israel has 2,000 hours of sunlight a year. Our component turns PV panels into smart panels that add 400 hours of sunlight. This is real news for the industry and it charmed the people at Generation Investment, which decided that it was worthwhile to invest in us."
Tigo has installed several Maximizer at PV systems worldwide, including at a 600-kilowatt facility in California and at a 500-kilowatt facility at Moshav Tagor in Israel. "We're getting good feedback from the people at Tagor, who say that energy exploitation rose 15%. We have a work plan for the period ahead, which includes installing our product extensively in Israel and other countries," said Hadar.
Hadar said that PV installations were being built at a rate of 10 megawatts a month, including in Europe and Asia, which boost Tigo's growth rate multifold. "Our sales grow 400% per quarter. In addition to the latest investment, we have a solid foundation for further development activity. By the end of the coming year, we'll market solar panels embedded with the Maximizer," said Hadar.
Tigo expects $30 million in sales in 2011.Gore's cleantech fund to finance Tigo Energy Inc., which develops solutions to... more
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