Green Options

Michael Mann, the somewhat infamous climate scientist from Penn State, shouldn’t be so infamous after all, we find out yet another time!

“An academic inquiry into the so-called ‘climategate’ email scandal has concluded that a well-known U.S. scientist [Mann] did not directly or indirectly falsify data in his research,” according to Mike De Souza of the National Post.

The investigation made it very clear (as other peer-reviewed analyses have done) that Mann’s “trick,” so horribly taken out of context and demonized by anti-science media and followers, was nothing unscientific, misleading or to be concerned about.

“They were not falsifying data,” said the report. “They were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”

Furthermore, the report went on to praise Mann for how he dealt with this greatly unfounded skepticism and criticism of his scientific work. “The report praised Dr. Mann for his ‘composure’ and ‘forthright response’ to all questions, finding no evidence that he had attempted to hide or destroy information, emails or data from his research. It also cleared him of allegations of misusing any privileged or confidential information he had access to as an academic scholar.”

It’s time to get angry. This is what John Kerry, not exactly the most extreme guy, is saying to us. Is it the best solution?

This is what Kerry told advocates of climate legislation recently:

“I want you to go out there and start knocking on doors and talking to people and telling people this has to happen. You know, if the Tea Party folks can go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God’s sake, a lot of citizens ought to get angry about the fact that they’re being killed and our planet is being injured by what’s happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel and the old practices that we have. That’s something worth getting angry about.” (emphasis mine)

As part of my Bachelor’s thesis in sociology and environmental studies, about 6 years ago, I studied the history of the environmental movement in great depth. Since then, I have been keeping my eye on things, on the bigger picture, as I work in different fields — natural and organic foods, city planning and sustainable development, alternative transportation, and, now, online journalism with a green tint.

The underlying question, consistently, is: “How do we avoid, or — worst case scenario — deal with, huge environmental collapse?”

The issues have only gotten bigger (see: Global Warming in the Arctic — Much Worse than We Thought!, Greenland Ice Sheet Melting Faster than Ever and Oceans Absorbing CO2, Preventing Climate Change — Good, Right? No). But we seem to be going down the same road consistently, despite all the amazing efforts of people trying to turn this car around (and transform it into something green-friendly). The environmental movement, perhaps bigger than ever, still seems on the brink of failure.

Well, they have done it before, but were stopped by the Bush administration in 2001. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has its own satellites and state-of-the-art sensors that it is going to start sharing with climate scientists again, in order to unlock some climate change and environmental mysteries.

Approximately 60 climate scientists (from academia, industry and federal agencies) have received the appropriate clearance now to access this information in order to further understand the current and future effects of climate change on the environment.

Officials state clearly that this is not taking away from other intelligence gathering missions in the least.

Fishing and refuse disposal are to be banned in the 1st high seas Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Southern Ocean, an area of the ocean that contains more species than the Galapagos Islands.

This will allow scientists to monitor the effects of climate change in this region. This is only the first of possibly twelve such areas.

Oceans regulate our climate. They play a key role in keeping the world’s “homeostasis” in tact. However, their ability to absorb carbon & keep the climate in balance is dwindling, a new report shows.

In a year-by-year study from 1765 to 2008, researchers found that the oceans are struggling to meet increasing emissions demands. They cannot take in as much carbon as they used to.

The study, published in the November 19 issue of the journal Nature, found that the percentage of fossil fuel emissions the ocean has been taking in since 2000 has decreased by as much as 10%.

This is the first study of its kind or breadth. One previous study had attempted to measure the oceans’ industrial carbon absorption for one year — 1994. This does so for a period of 200+ years.

In a paper published recently in the journal Conservation Biology, two scientists attempt to summarize all the available arguments both for and against scientists-as-advocates. Their conclusion, arrived at because of the determination that scientists are citizens first and scientists second, is that the scientific community should indeed be more involved in advocacy than it is. Climate change, to me, seems to be the ideal spot for this to take place.

Image credit: Jack Dempsey and NREL/DOE

Written by Renee Cho and published on May 10, 2009, at SolveClimate.

To deal with the effects of climate change, jobs will be springing up across the spectrum of research and development, fueled by billions of dollars in Department of Energy grants and scientific funding provided by the economic recovery program and proposed through the Markey-Waxman bill’s National Climate Change Adaptation Program and Fund.

As Energy Secretary Steven Chu likes to say, borrowing from hockey great Wayne Gretzky:

“The United States should skate to where the puck is going to be.”

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed battery cells capable of charging in under a minute, an astonishing 100 times faster than a regular rechargable battery.

The breakthrough could revolutionize electric car battery technology and pave the way for ultra-fast charging electric vehicles in as little as two years.

The discovery came when MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder found out how to get a common lithium compound to release and take up lithium ions in a matter of seconds. According to Ceder, the compound, known as lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), has a crystal structure that creates “perfectly sized tunnels for lithium to move through,” allowing the team to reach “ridiculously fast charging rates.”

Many eco-conscious families struggle with buying seafood that is both healthy for themselves and the environment.

“Choosing eco-friendly seafood is not only good for the oceans, it’s good for your family too,” says Katharine Burnham, spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund.

So what exactly is eco-friendly seafood? Anchovies are the Eco-Best Seafood, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s research.  In its health facts, the fund says anchovies are high in heart-healthy omega-3s and have low contaminant levels.

Anchovies can be safely eaten by adults and children for more than four meals per month, research indicates.  They have “short life spans and reproduce quickly (and) are resilient to fishing pressure and remain plentiful.”

The world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Cray XT Jaguar, is to be to used in the quest to fight global warming and develop renewable energy.

The computer, housed in the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL), Tennessee, has been upgraded to a staggering 1.64 petaflops  - and put at the disposal of some of the world’s leading climate scientists and renewable energy experts.

US Scientists have figured out a way to mass produce the nanomaterial graphene, opening the door to significant advances in the storage of hydrogen, as well as the electricity produced by solar and wind energy.

Graphene, produced by reducing graphite down to a sheet only one atom thick, is one of the strongest materials known to man. It has been shown to have huge potential for hydrogen and renewable energy storage, but up until now has been held back by a lack of supply. Now the team, based at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA, have discovered a method of producing graphene sheets in large quantities.