Green Options

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One of my passions in life is climate science and research, and I am a strong defender of the science proving anthropogenic global warming. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has long attempted to bring to the forefront the scientific facts about humanities effects on the environment. Naturally, there have been those who have set out to simply ignore or discredit them at every turn.

One of the focuses of their attacks has been what some call the “notorious hockey stick” graph. The graph shows a fluctuating temperature variation over the past 2000 years (including the Medieval Warming period), with a marked spike at the end; in other words, a flat (for a given value of flat, see graph below) line and a curve at the end, similar to a hockey stick. You will have seen the graph if you’ve watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Now, a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled “Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia” has once again validated the science behind the hockey stick graph.

Civil and environmental professor and ecopreneur-inventor Jack V. Matson, PhD.
dedicates his life to practicing “intelligent fast failure,” an expression he coined to capture the essence of innovation. It’s captured in his irreverently titled book, Innovate or Die: A Personal Perspective on the Art of Innovation. As an ecopreneur, he started an environmental design firm, Matson & Associates Inc., housed in a green office building and personally holds two patents on water purification products.

In Innovate or Die, Matson suggests that the goal with intelligent fast failure is to move as quickly as possible from new ideas to new knowledge by making small and manageable mistakes — intelligent failures. By moving quickly, we can determine what works, and what doesn’t, without draining the bank account and energy devoted to developing the idea. With the increasing variability in climate and rapidly changing global marketplace and social fabric, ecopreneurs are creating new business models, products and services that defy common conventions. Some will fail. The key is to keep learning and try to avoid letting your intelligent failures negatively influence your emotions and self-esteem. And by all means, fail falling forward.

Given the widespread interest in producing biodiesel domestically, Matson launched the Green Biodiesel, LLC, a spinoff venture of Matson & Associates Inc., seeking to develop a new biofuel production process that relies entirely on nontoxic materials to produce a clean-burning alternative fuel from renewable resources in the US. One of the problems facing biodiesel producers and users is that the conventional biodiesel production process uses a number of toxic chemicals to convert vegetable oil feedstocks into a usable fuel. Methanol and sodium hydroxide, two toxic industrial chemicals widely used in the transesterfication process to produce biodiesel, are potentially dangerous to humans and the environment. In order for biodiesel to be a truly environmentally friendly fuel, current and future producers need an alternative process that does not use toxic chemicals or produce significant waste products.

A new study in the journal BMC Ecology indicates that coastal wolves in British Columbia switch to eating salmon in the fall as a primary food source, rather than deer. Scientists arrived at this conclusion after analyzing wolf poop they collected over a four year span.

Among the thousands of stools that were collected by the researchers in the spring and summer months, 90-95% of them contained some indications that wolves were eating deer as prey. In the fall, however, this number dropped significantly. About 40-70% of the stools in this time of year indicated that wolves were dining on salmon.

So what’s the big deal?

Dogs have long been accepted as man’s best friend. But nosy ones have provided inspiration to a laser research team working on early cancer detection methods to devise a breathalyzer-type tool that could significantly improve survival rates for suffering millions.

Researchers at University of Oklahoma are reportedly working to create a sensor to detect bio-marker gases exhaled in the breath of a person with cancer, picking up on earlier studies showing that dogs can detect cancer by sniffing the exhaled breath of cancer patients.

In a study published two years ago, it was found that dogs identified breast and lung cancer patients with accuracies of 88% and 97%, respectively by smelling breath samples.

It has been proven elsewhere that gas-phase molecules are uniquely associated with cancer but the team will use nanotechnology to improve laser performance and shrink laser systems, which would allow battery-powered operation of a hand held sensor device.

One of the big advances we’ve seen in moving towards a renewable future is in the field of biofuels. And one of the sources of biofuels currently being studied is algae. It grows on your pond, or at the lake near your house, but it might also one day keep your car running and your plane in the air.

And a joint venture between Rose Ann Cattolico at University of Washington and investment company Recently Allied Minds might soon see a different type of algae for different types of situations.

"People don’t realize how many types of algae there are – from single cells to large kelp – and each one develops differently," Cattolico said. "What we’re trying to do is choose the best of the best, the ones that produce the right lipids for a particular type of fuel."

Ever found yourself making it to the end of a week, hoping for a sunny weekend in which to lie outside or head to the beach or do some gardening, only to wake up on Saturday morning to overcast skies? I bet it’s happened before, probably more than once.

Well it seems that, according to Spanish researchers, this may not be Gods attempt at humor, but rather our own doing.

A professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology claims to have developed a catalyst that can cut the cost of making non-food based cellulosic ethanol — “celluline,” as I like to call it — by 30%.

Just for grits and shiggles, let’s say that when celluline’s finally produced in commercial amounts it will cost consumers $3.00 per gallon. If the cost savings associated with this catalyst were passed on to consumers, that would mean the same celluline would cost $2.10 per gallon.

Professor Michikazu Hara says the carbon-based catalyst can be made cheaply, and works by breaking down cellulose and creating sugar when mixed with water and heated to 100° C. Using the current celluline production methods, this step in the process uses a large amount of energy, time and chemicals.

A small group of unassuming mid-westerners has discovered what could be a complete game-changer for the global biodiesel industry. Their new system makes biodiesel in mere seconds, creates a product that costs half the price, produces no waste, and can use any animal fat or vegetable oil as a feedstock.

I’ll tell you what — even though I’m sometimes down on my country because of the pathetic state of our government — the thing that always makes my patriotism swell is the truly amazing and unexpected ingenuity that seems to spring forth from the American people.

And in this tale, American ingenuity doesn’t get much more classic. A student and his professor at a small college smack dab in the middle of the heartland that virtually nobody’s ever heard of, have figured out a way to make biodiesel quickly, cheaply, and efficiently from a very small package.

The U.S. retail sector represented 4.5 trillion dollars in 2007 and so when retailers talk about trends we should listen. A new study released by The Aberdeen Group shows where retailers are going when it comes to going green. The good news is that the opportunities for eco-entrepreneurs will continue to grow.

According to Environmental Leader, the new report titled “Getting From Green To Gold: Retail Success Factors and Outcomes” lists the six key focus areas for retailers:

• Adopt enterprise-wide policies for green sourcing/procurement (59%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates for waste management (54%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates around packaging (48%)
• Redesign the retail supply chain to align with green/responsible mandates (41%)
• Offer eco-friendly end-of-life product programs to customers (41%)
• Redesign store facilities and infrastructure around sustainability goals (35%)

Under a new research directive at Ames National Laboratory, scientists are honing in on a way to use a process called gasification to create cheap ethanol from almost any carbon source without fermentation. If they’re successful, crops, agricultural waste, lawn clippings, raked leaves, sewage sludge and garbage could all be turned into ethanol using the same efficient process, in the same facility, under one roof.

Blast into the Future: Alternative energy is revolutionizing the world. Solar collectors are everywhere and everything: they are home pathways, roof shingles, parking lots, roads, supermarket pavements, airport tarmacs…

Roads and parking lots as solar collectors? Is that the newest revolutionary innovation since the term “alternative energy”? Capturing solar energy from pavements has been perfected for years now.

Researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute will unveil Tuesday, August 19, 2008 the findings of a research project on the concept of using the heat absorbed by pavements. Rajib Mallick, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who was the team leader will hail the achievement as “revolutionary”.

By using the heat from asphalt, the researchers have developed a solar collector that could turn roads and parking lots into invisible and cheap sources of electricity and hot water.