Even as the world prepares for the grand climate meet at Copenhagen this December, a large part of South India has gone under water. And while talks have already begun on coming up with an equitable deal and the very fear that there may be none, over 300 people have already lost their lives while millions are displaced and missing in this global warming related freak weather event, predicted well in advance by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.
Turkey farmers growing greenhouse tomatoes have been using this technology since 2005. California is going to get it before the end of this year.
LA-based ClimateMinder now completely owns the Turkish company Kodalfa and it is eager to bring some of its technology to the US. This company’s “new” climate-monitoring and control system helps greenhouse farmers to monitor their crops and adjust the conditions of their greenhouses with wireless technology. This helps farmers and consumers in numerous and significant ways.
This picture is a picture of the beautiful Monterey, California coastline. This is where I grew up. It is famous for it’s beautiful sea life. Sea otters, jelly fish, sea lions, kelp forests all populate the Monterey coast. The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world. Yet, with all that mass of water, we humans are changing the chemical properties. The acid levels in the pacific ocean, as well as every ocean around the world, are rising. If things keep going this beautiful coastline, my home, will become a wasteland of acid. Habitable to only the most extremophiles.
Rewind our story. Fossil fuels are not just a problem for our atmosphere. When we burn fossil fuels carbon dioxide falls down into the sea. The carbon dioxide is quickly converted into carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has been known to be corrosive to corals and shellfish, and now scientists are discovering that rising acid levels in the ocean are effecting other animals as well.
In a recent Zogby telephone poll conducted to gauge public opinion on the the Waxman-Markey climate bill, the results showed that a majority of Americans are finally behind climate legislation.
Legendary San Diego microbrewery Karl Strauss has partnered with the GreenHouse alternative energy company and the E-Fuel MicroFueler to convert waste yeast from the brewery to ethanol. When a microbrewer, a microfueler, and the inventor of the Nintendo Wii controller (Tom Quinn, CEO of E-Fuel) get together, there has to be a twist, and there is. Instead of limiting the operation to ethanol conversion at the brewery, GreenHouse will collect the waste yeast from the brewery and transport it to participating homes and businesses. Each will have the refrigerator-sized portable MicroFueler unit on site, enabling them to produce ethanol and pump it directly from the MicroFueler into their vehicles.
California is trying many different initiatives to make its contribution to mitigate climate-change, many different ways to reduce its GHG emissions- drop by drop. Diverse attempts themselves improve its chances of success. But what in my mind, greatly improves its chance is the ability of California to think on behalf of the consumer, the common person.
Renewable fuels company Sustainable Oils shared the results of a life-cycle analysis of jet fuel created from proprietary Camelina seeds. According to the study, renewable jet-fuel made from Camelina reduces carbon emissions by 84% percent compared to the petroleum-based counterpart.
A team at Michigan Tech University based their research on Camelina grown in Montana and then processed into bio-jet fuel using “UOP hydroprocessing technology”. Next generation biofuels are true hydrocarbons and in the molecular aspect are indistinguishable from fossil fuels, which makes Camelina oil a good candidate to quickly reduce carbon emissions produced by aviation.
Climate scientists have long known that, pound for pound, methane is 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping the suns rays, making it a highly potent greenhouse gas. An incredible 900 billion tonnes of the noxious fumes are produced each year by methanogen bacteria that live in the digestive systems of ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats.
Do you have tons of plastic bottles lying around your house and excess backyard space? If so, you might want to look into building a plastic bottle greenhouse. The greenhouse idea was devised and brought to life by Blue Rock Station. For $5 (the electronic version is $4), you can buy instructions to build one yourself.
Scientists from the University of Calgary in Canada have created a method to efficiently capture carbon dioxide directly from the air around us. The device, which is built on near-commercial technology, was built by Uof C climate change scientists David Keith and his team.
“At first thought, capturing CO2 from the air where it’s at a concentration of 0.04 per cent seems absurd, when we are just starting to do cost-effective capture at power plants where CO2 produced is at a concentration of more than 10 per cent,” says Keith, Canada Research Chair in Energy and Environment.
“But the thermodynamics suggests that air capture might only be a bit harder than capturing CO2 from power plants. We are trying to turn that theory into engineering reality.”
