The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity.Â
The Huanen Beijing co-generation power plant is not the shining advertisement for clean coal that advocates claim, according to Thomas R Blakeslee in Renewable Energy World last week. Australian carbon capture and storage technology has been installed at the plant and 3,300 tonnes of carbon dioxide are captured annually and sold to soft drink manufacturers. Continue Reading →
by Thomas R. Blakeslee, Clearlight Foundation
About six months ago, I presented a paper at the The China Power & Alternative Energy Summit. It was the first time that geothermal was represented at this important conference, which has so far been dominated by wind and solar presentations.
We assembled an excellent panel of presenters from Australia, Germany, Iceland and the U.S. The title of my paper was Can Geothermal Replace Coal for Baseload Power? I was delighted to find that the program included a field trip to the local coal power plant, which is a model of cleanliness and efficiency.
The government of the United Kingdom is in breach of its own laws according to European Union officials who have prepared a court case against it. European environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said that the particulate emissions from diesels on London’s highways regularly exceed limits set by the EU in 1999 that passed into UK law in 2005. The controversial third runway proposed for Heathrow airport would cause emissions of Nitrous Oxide to exceed safe levels resulting in further actions. It is expected that this case will take two years to come to court.
German reinsurance giant, Munich RE, reports that 220,000 people died as a direcdt result of natural disasters caused by global warming in 2008, the second worst year on record. The resulting insurance losses cost $US200 billion compared to $US82 in 2007 and $US232 in 2005. The annual round up of natural disasters is significant because the company backs many of the world’s largest insurers and sets the benchmark for premiums and those items considered to risky to insure. Cyclones in Asia, and earthquake in China and extreme weather resulting in death through exposure to cold or heat exhaustion in densely populated areas led to the high figures. As well as adjusting prices and risk ratings, the company is actively lobbying for responsible action from governments to minimise emissions and reduce the risk posed by extreme weather.
The Great Barrier Reef has been in decline for the last eighteen years, according to the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville. As well as the coral bleaching that accured in 1998 and is expected again this year, the reef has already suffered from increasingly acidic sea water. As the ocean warms it absorbs more carbon dioxide, as carbonic acid which makes it harder for the coral to extract minerals.The scientists said the growth of coral over teh last two decades is slower than it has been for the last 400 years.