Oil producers seek CO2

Wyoming oil producers desperately want to divert streams of greenhouse gas currently being vented into the atmosphere and pump them into aging oil fields for permanent storage.

The producers' main goal may not be rooted in concerns over climate change. Nonetheless, the capture and storage of carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change -- is key to reviving oil production for the next 30 years and beyond in Wyoming.

The Wyoming Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute estimates that some 20 trillion cubic feet of CO2 could be sequestered in Wyoming's oil basins. The institute held a forum in Casper Tuesday, bringing together those who produce CO2 and those who want CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.

"CO2 is deathly expensive here," said John Dobitz, senior vice president of Rancher Energy Corp.

Rancher Energy will embark on a CO2 enhanced oil recovery project in the Big Muddy and South Glenrock fields just east of Casper, where it expects to recover an additional 10 percent to 15 percent of the original oil in place.

Oil production in Wyoming has declined at an annual rate of about 5.4 percent since 1991, according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Some 58 million barrels of oil were produced in the state in 2000, marking the state's lowest level of oil production since 1954.

In many oil fields, as much as 60 percent of the original oil reserve remains unproduced after conventional, low-pressure recovery methods. In enhanced oil recovery, alternate flows of water and CO2 are pumped into an oil reservoir, sweeping additional volumes of oil to production wells.

After several years of "CO2 flooding" at the Salt Creek field in central Wyoming, Anadarko Petroleum helped stop Wyoming's annual 5 percent decline in oil production in 2006.

More from the Star Tribune

Global warming and landslides

Landslides in Chittagong on the night of 10-11 June, 2007 once again proved the severe effect of global warming. During the twenty four hours, rainfall was 267 mm highest in 25 years. Torrential rains sparked a series of devastating landslides in Chittagong, plunging Chittanging city into chaos, with power supplies snapped, the port and air port closed and killing 126 human souls and destruction of properties costing huge amount of money. Hills came crushing down after overnight rain, mud and debris buried the houses including their occupants while they slept giving no chance to escape.

Global warming means increase in temperature of the earth's atmosphere caused by the greenhouse gases ( carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide).The main cause of global warming is the sun, and the heat and light it sends to earth. Global warming or climate change is causing wild temperature swings and a dramatic rise in storms, heat waves, excessive rainfall and other extreme weather effects. It has brought catastrophe to millions, killing an estimated 150,000 people around the world each year.

The earth's atmosphere acts like the glass in a greenhouse, allowing much of the sun's solar radiation to travel through unimpeded, but trapping a lot of the reflected heat trying to escape back to space. This process raises the temperature just as it does in a greenhouse. The atmosphere is simply the layer of gases that surround the planet like a blanket which make up protective layer with right type of gas like ozone etc which support life on earth.

Since industrialization began, emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) - in particular carbon dioxide - have significantly increased, primarily due to increase burning of fossils fuels. As a result, heat has been trapped in the atmosphere and earth's global surface temperature has begun to rise, reaching its highest level for 140 years. The temperature of the earth has risen 1.1 of during the last century.

More from The New Nation

Rapid deforestation poses warming threat

TARAPOTO, Peru --
Brown, denuded hillsides dot the landscape, cleared by poor farmers to grow coca or food crops where dense jungle once stood in subtropical north-central Peru.

Boulders stand bare. Topsoil, having lost its protection, washes away under the assault of heavy rain.

Deforestation in Latin America and the Caribbean is accelerating, a new report shows, and the implications are growing more ominous every year.

Scientists say deforestation, almost always to facilitate planting crops and raising cattle, accounts for about 20 percent of the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Environmentalists are pushing to allow countries and companies to offset their emissions by paying to preserve forests elsewhere, such as in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Group of Eight nations, meeting in Germany earlier this month, pledged to help poor countries reduce deforestation to provide ``a significant and cost-effective contribution toward mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.''

These calls come amid the release of an annual report published last month by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization showing that from 2000 to 2005, the rate of destruction of forest in Latin America and the Caribbean had risen to 0.51 percent of overall land, up from 0.46 percent during the 1990s. Forests accounted for 51 percent of the overall land in Latin America and the Caribbean in 1990, but only 47 percent in 2005.

More from the Miami Herald

Rains Cause Chaos in Pakistani City, 220 Killed

"Now the total number of those killed because of rain is 228," provincial Health Minister Sardar Ahmed told Reuters. "These deaths are caused by electrocution, falling trees, house collapses and road accidents."

More bad weather is forecast for Pakistan and neighbouring India, where dozens have died after prolonged downpours across the country in the last few days. Aid workers and military helicopters in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh were battling on Sunday to provide food for 200,000 people displaced by monsoon floods.

Karachi residents hurled stones at passing cars and power company vehicles and burned tyres in protest at the power outage affecting most of the country's commercial hub.

Low-lying neighbourhoods were submerged after 17.7 millimetres (0.7 inches) fell on the city from Saturday. The rains were followed by a strong storm which uprooted trees and signboards and cut electricity wires.

Pakistani officials said hospitals in the sprawling city had reported 43 deaths, while a private welfare organisation, Edhi Trust, had received the bodies of another 185 people.

Weather officials predicted more rains.

More from Planet Ark

Biofuel Bonanza

THIRTY YEARS AGO in Brazil, a group of visionaries saw the potential of bioethanol made from sugarcane as a transportation fuel and created a national program promoting its use. Fast-forward to a month ago, when a group of U.S. and Brazilian chemists pulled up to the front gate of one of the more than 300 bioethanol plants in Brazil. What immediately grabbed the visitors' attention were the truckloads of hand-cut sugarcane rolling in from the fields. As they toured the facility, the visitors watched in awe as the sugarcane was transformed into sugar, bioethanol, and electricity—the process left nothing for waste.

Today in Brazil, another group of visionaries sees similar potential for the combination of bioethanol and biodiesel. In actuality, conversion of sugars and fats and oils to bioethanol, biodiesel, and value-added chemicals and materials already is helping to extend fossil fuel supplies and is starting to change the global economy. And next-generation technologies for converting cellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals are expected to ramp up and add to the mix in the coming 30 years.

These developments make it an exciting time for scientists, chemical companies, entrepreneurs, and investors (C&EN, Nov. 20, 2006, page 30). But it's also a time for caution. Piecemeal development of biofuel technologies without regard to regional and global sustainability could lead to problems in food production, environmental degradation, trade imbalances, and social and economic failures. What's needed is an international effort that helps promote biofuel development so that all countries can participate equitably in a global energy marketplace. That's the new vision.

As one starting point, scientists and policymakers from Brazil and the U.S.—the world leaders in biofuel research and development—participated in a historic symposium in Águas de Lindóia, Brazil, on May 30-31 to create sustainable research collaborations for improving biomass conversion. A report from that meeting is expected to take shape over the next few months and will be used to inform funding agencies and policymakers in both countries on future needs in biofuels R&D. In a nutshell, Brazil has much to offer the U.S. as an experienced partner in bioethanol and biodiesel production, while the U.S. has committed to developing technologies for converting cellulosic plant material into fuels and chemicals, which could aid Brazil.

More From Chemical & Engineering News

Going green

Despite forecasts of doom, Sweden's economy is thriving thanks to alternative energy sources and lowered carbon emissions, Louise Williams reports.

In the cool forest region of southern Sweden, the city of Vaxjo has turned off the heating oil, even on the darkest, snowbound days of winter. Coal, too, is gone and next on the fossil fuel hit list is petrol. In the underground car park of the local government offices there are no private vehicles, just a communal car fleet.

Staff, who cycle or take the local biogas buses to work, book ahead to use vehicles in the fleet, and fill up on biogas or E85, a blend of 85 per cent renewable ethanol. Petrol is still readily available to the public, but carbon emissions in Sweden are heavily taxed. Drivers pay about 80 cents a litre extra at the bowser for the privilege of spewing out carbon dioxide.

Vaxjo is chasing a fossil fuel-free future, and it's almost halfway there without having sacrificed lifestyle, comfort or economic growth. When local politicians announced the phase-out in 1996, it was little more than a quaint curiosity. Oil prices were hovering around $US20 a barrel and global warming was still a hotly contested debate.

Today, at least one international delegation a week - mainly from China and Japan - beats a path to Vaxjo to see how it's done.

More Sydney Morning Herald

Heading for Hills May Be Only Option on Fiji

Imagine taking the state of Connecticut and breaking it up into little pieces. Then, sprinkle the bits over an area the size of Africa — and you have the island nations of the Pacific.

These islands hold both paradise and poverty. What's common to all of them, though, is their proximity to the ocean. It laps at their doorsteps, and controls their weather and food supply.

Now, that ocean is changing as the world warms. Along the coast of Fiji's big island, Viti Levu, resort hotels and small fishing villages share the same view of a wide blue Pacific; and all are noticing changes in their environment.

Kanid Kashana Koshi is director of the University of the South Pacific Center for Environment in Suva, Viti Levu's capital city.

"An average global temperature rise will definitely have a lot of secondary impacts, one of which is sea level rise," Koshi says.

More from NPR

Impact environmental factors have on health

The data show huge inequalities but also demonstrate that in every country, people's health could be improved by reducing environmental risks including pollution, hazards in the work environment, UV radiation, noise, agricultural risks, climate and ecosystem change.

The new data show that 13 million deaths worldwide could be prevented every year by making environments healthier. In some countries, more than one third of the disease burden could be prevented through environmental improvements. The worst affected countries include Angola, Burkina Faso and Mali, as well as Afghanistan.

In 23 countries worldwide, more than 10% of deaths are due to just two environmental risk factors: unsafe water, including poor sanitation and hygiene; and indoor air pollution due to solid fuel use for cooking. Around the world, children under five are the main victims and make up 74% of deaths due to diarrhoeal disease and lower respiratory infections.

Low income countries suffer the most from environmental health factors, losing about 20 times more healthy years of life per person per year than high income countries. However, the data show that no country is immune from the environmental impact on health. Even in countries with better environmental conditions, almost one sixth of the disease burden could be prevented, and efficient environmental interventions could significantly reduce cardiovascular disease and road traffic injuries.

"These country estimates are a first step towards assisting national decision-makers in the sectors of health and environment to set priorities for preventive action," said Susanne Weber-Mosdorf, WHO Assistant Director-General for Sustainable Development and Healthy Environments. "It is important to quantify the burden of disease from unhealthy environments. This information is key to help countries select the appropriate interventions."

More from News-Medical.net

Earth could 'flip' into environmental disaster

The Earth is in imminent peril and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change, six leading scientists say .

Writing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, the American scientists believe civilisation itself is threatened by global warming.

They also implicitly criticise the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for under-estimating the scale of sea-level rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets.

Instead of sea levels rising by about 40 centimetres, as the IPCC predicts in one of its computer forecasts, the scientists say the true rise may be as great as several metres by 2100, which is why Earth today is in "imminent peril".

More from the New Zealand Herald

Atlantic May Have 10 Tropical Storms From July Through November

June 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Atlantic hurricane season probably will have 10 systems of at least tropical-storm strength from July through November, U.K. government meteorologists said, a prediction that's lower than other forecasts.

The Met Office prediction is the first based on computer climate models to process current oceanic and atmospheric conditions and project them into the future, the forecaster said. In trials in 2005 and 2006, the method proved more accurate than traditional forecasts using historical analysis, the agency said.

``What has happened in the past is not necessarily representative of what will happen in the future,'' Met Office forecaster Matt Huddleston told reporters and insurers at the Lloyds of London building in the U.K. capital's financial district. ``It's imperative that we start to take into account the changes from global warming and use these climate models.''

Today's prediction, lower than the average of 12.4 tropical storms a year since 1990, doesn't include the two tropical storms that have already occurred nor any systems that may form before the end of this month. The Met Office tally is lower than those from the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Colorado State University and London-based consultant Tropical Storm Risk, which all predicted that this season will be more active than usual.

More from Bloomberg

Sifting the Garbage for a Green Polymer

Carbon dioxide. Orange peels. Chicken feathers. Olive oil. Potato peels. E. coli bacteria. It is as if chemists have gone Dumpster diving in their hunt to make biodegradable, sustainable and renewable plastics. Most bioplastics are made from plants like corn, soy, sugar cane and switch grass, but scientists have recently turned to trash in an effort to make so-called green polymers, essentially plastics from garbage.

Geoff Coates, a chemist at Cornell, one of the leaders in the creation of green polymers, pointed to a golden brown square of plastic in a drying chamber.

“It kind of looks like focaccia baking, doesn’t it?” Dr. Coates said. “That’s almost 50 percent carbon dioxide by weight.”

Dr. Coates’s laboratories occupy almost the entire fifth floor of the Spencer T. Olin Laboratory at Cornell, and have a view not only of Cayuga Lake and the hills surrounding Cornell, but of a coal power plant that has served as a kind of inspiration. It was here that Dr. Coates discovered the catalyst needed to turn CO2 into a polymer.

More from the New York Times

Antarctic To Cover Global Water Shortage

Many Antarctic mysteries have been unraveled. Just as many continue to puzzle us to this day. For instance, science has not yet calculated the Antarctic ice cap balance - that is, the ratio between the annual snow fallout and the amount of ice lost as icebergs thaw off.

An ambitious program, International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, was launched last March to delve into Arctic and Antarctic secrets. It involves experts from more than 60 countries as breakthroughs in Earth sciences can be made only by pooled efforts on comprehensive projects.

Russian scientists were involved in developing the concept for the program. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Council of Scientific Unions approved their idea in 2004. Dr. Vladimir Kotlyakov, a prominent geographer and glaciologist, and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, represents Russia on the IPY Joint Committee, which has drawn a unified IPY research program that includes 200 Russian projects.

The program attempts to collect comprehensive information about many aspects of the Arctic and Antarctic environment, and its wide and quick dissemination. It envisages an accurate all-round evaluation of current processes and forecasts of climatic and environmental changes. Scientists will offer recommendations on possible practical measures.

More from Terra Daily

The Limited Appeal of Nuclear Energy

After 20 years of stagnaion, nuclear energy again finds favor in the eyes of many energy planners. In contrast with electricity generated from coal or natural gas, nuclear power contributes little to greenhouse gas emissions and could therefore help in the effort to reduce global warming. The establishment of a tax on carbon emissions, which has been widely proposed as an incentive to move away from fossil-fuel use, would make nuclear energy even more attractive. Such arguments may ultimately prove compelling to industrial nations—but to assume that the developing nations will follow suit is to ignore some important realities.

Currently 435 nuclear reactors operate around the world, with an electrical generating capacity of approximately 370 gigawatts (GW), providing about 17 percent of the world’s electricity. Various analysts have optimistically foreseen a steep rise in those numbers. For instance, a 2003 interdisciplinary study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology outlined a scenario of “low” nuclear growth that would still allow a tripling of nuclear generation by 2050. The contribution of the developing nations would soar to a third of the whole, from 10 to 307 GW. To reach that level, however, would demand about 8 percent annual growth sustained over 45 years.

No economic modeling figured into that estimate; the analysts merely assumed that the developing nations would aim for the 10 to 20 percent share of electricity from nuclear power that the rest of the world would adopt. Yet financing the up-front investments needed for nuclear plants is a major challenge even in industrialized countries: so far nuclear power expands only where governments facilitate private investment, a practice that is at odds with strong market liberalization policies. That trend will hold even more markedly in developing countries.

Moreover, motivation to shift to nuclear energy may be lacking. Concerns about greenhouse gas emissions simply do not have a high priority now in developing nations. Neither the Kyoto Protocol nor any other international agreement constrains those emissions for them (they were exempted to assist their development). For poor countries, the pivotal problem is the allocation of scarce resources. Their financial authorities cannot easily justify subsidizing nuclear energy at the expense of more pressing needs in health, education and poverty reduction

More from Scientific American

Global warming to multiply world's refugee burden

BEIRUT, June 18 (Reuters) - If rising sea levels force the people of the Maldive Islands to seek new homes, who will look after them in a world already turning warier of refugees?

The daunting prospect of mass population movements set off by climate change and environmental disasters poses an imminent new challenge that no one has yet figured out how to meet.

People displaced by global warming -- the Christian Aid agency has predicted there will be one billion by 2050 -- could dwarf the nearly 10 million refugees and almost 25 million internally displaced people already fleeing wars and oppression.

"All around the world, predictable patterns are going to result in very long-term and very immediate changes in the ability of people to earn their livelihoods," said Michele Klein Solomon of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM).

"It's pretty overwhelming to see what we might be facing in the next 50 years," she said. "And it's starting now."

People forced to move by climate change, salination, rising sea levels, deforestation or desertification do not fit the classic definition of refugees -- those who leave their homeland to escape persecution or conflict and who need protection.

But the world's welcome even for these people is wearing thin, just as United Nations figures show that an exodus from Iraq has reversed a five-year decline in overall refugee numbers.

More from Reuters

Nourished nearby

One after another, the phone calls came in last week at the Coffee Pot Ranch in Placer County, where Shirley Field and her husband, Bob Sorensen, raise animals and sell frozen pork, beef and lamb to local customers.

One caller had heard about a recall of hamburger contaminated with E. coli and wanted to know how soon she could buy beef from the ranch.

Another wanted to know if Coffee Pot's sausages contained the kinds of glutens that were chemically doctored with melamine in China and led to the recent pet food crisis.

And a third wanted to know if the ranch's hogs were being raised in a humane and environmentally sensitive manner.

Field was happy to take the calls and provide assurances about everything from the farm's feeds to its philosophies.

Like many farmers and producers who sell directly to local customers, she has seen a jump in business as more and more people -- motivated by food safety scares, environmental concerns and a desire for deeper connections to those who grow their foods -- are choosing locally grown items for their tables.

"Every day we get more questions," Field said. "People are really starting to question their food."

more from the Sacramento Bee

Could plastic grow on trees?

A major step towards creating "biorefineries" that can turn plants and trees into plastics and petrol has been reported by chemists.

The advance in renewable energy comes as Colin Campbell of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, based in London and Aberdeen, warns that global production of oil is set to peak in the next four years before entering a steepening decline, though the centre itself believes the decline could begin any time until 2015.

For years, chemists have quested for the elusive goal of finding a way to sidestep the use of crude oil as the root source of chemicals for plastic, fuels and scores of other industrial and household chemicals, aiming to replace it with inexpensive, nonpolluting renewable plant matter instead.

Today, there is a concerted global effort to identify ways of converting plant-derived molecules, especially cellulose, into replacements for petrochemical feedstocks. In that way, biorefineries would be used for the production of fuels, chemicals and plastics instead of traditional (petro)chemical processing.

More from the Telegraph

Drowning in Plastic

LIFE ON EARTH depends on little specks floating in the ocean. Tiny plankton convert sunlight to energy to form the base of the marine food chain, sustaining all seafaring creatures, from anchovies to whales and the land-based animals that eat them.

But increasingly, researchers are peering through their microscopes at the specks in seawater samples and finding miniscule bits of poisonous garbage instead of life-sustaining mini-critters.

It’s plastic— broken by sunlight and water into itty bitty pieces, but still intact. And now scientists are discovering the implications of one troubling attribute of petroleum-based plastic, known since its invention, but ignored under the assumption that technology would eventually resolve it: Every plastic product that has ever been manufactured still exists.

Only 50 years since we began mass-producing it, our plastic waste has built up into a poisonous mountain we have never really learned how to deal with. It makes up 10 percent of California’s garbage, is toxic to burn and hard to recycle.

Out in the Pacific Ocean a vortex of trash swirls and grows, forming a garbage dump twice the size of Texas.

More from the Monterey County Weekly

Ag Expert: Growing corn for green fuel could ignite Gulf of Mexico dead zone

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Growing corn in the Midwest for green fuel could increase pollution downriver and contribute to a “dead zone” that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, a national agriculture expert said Tuesday.

“We're in a dilemma in this country,” Gary Mast, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday. “We want food. We want fuel. We want it to be produced environmentally soundly.”

The problem is that corn needs more nitrogen fertilizer than other crops. More corn means more nitrogen fertilizer. Runoff carrying the fertilizer fuels the growth of microscopic organisms that then die, fall to the bottom and decompose, using up the oxygen there.

Mast is a Department of Agriculture representative on a national task force created in late 1997 to find ways to reduce the runoff of nutrients. He said farmers have put in 2.3 million acres of buffer zones to absorb farmland runoff before it gets to waterways.

He added that 1.4. million acres of wetlands have been added to the Mississippi River basin, including at least part of 30 states.

It doesn't compensate for all of the additional acres in corn, he said in an interview, but “I think we've made progress.”

More from the Associated Press

From Turkey Waste, a New Fuel and a New Fight

ENSON, Minn. — For anyone curious about what thousands of tons of turkey litter looks like, piled high into an indoor olfactory-assaulting mountain of manure, this old railroad stop on the extreme edge of alternative energy production is the place to be.

Thanks to the abundance of local droppings, Benson is home to a new $200 million power plant that burns turkey litter to produce electricity. For the last few weeks now, since before generating operations began in mid-May, turkey waste has poured in from nearby farms by the truckload, filling a fuel hall several stories high.

The power plant is a novelty on the prairie, the first in the country to burn animal litter (manure mixed with farm-animal bedding like wood chips). And it sits at the intersection of two national obsessions: an appetite for lean meat and a demand for alternative fuels.

But it has also put Benson, a town of 3,376 some three hours west of Minneapolis, on the map in another way: as a target of environmental advocates who question the earth-friendliness of the operation.

More from the New York Times

The wrath of 2007: America's great drought

America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.

From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.

In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895. California and Nevada, where burgeoning population centres co-exist with an often harsh, barren landscape, have seen less rain over the past year than at any time since 1924. The Sierra Nevada range, which straddles the two states, received only 27 per cent of its usual snowfall in winter, with immediate knock-on effects on water supplies for the populations of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

The human impact, for the moment, has been limited, certainly nothing compared to the great westward migration of Okies in the 1930 - the desperate march described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.

More from the Independent

Fuel from algae?

Forget corn, sugar and switchgrass.

David Summers wants to fuel your car with algae grown underground.

The University of Missouri-Rolla mining engineer says the nation's energy crisis could be solved by an overlooked source: green, slimy algae — slick and buoyant because of its high oil content. And he wants to grow it in a strange place: in the university's experimental mine.

"We've got tubes in the ground now. Or rather, under the ground," he said.

Plexiglass tubes filled with several strains of algae line an empty hallway in the mine. Water, carbon dioxide and nutrients percolate up through the column. Different growth lights shine on the tubes. The slime is one of the fastest-growing photosynthesizers on Earth.

Most algae are between 20 percent and 25 percent oil. But when stressed, some algae have achieved 50 percent oil content.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory funded work with algae for nearly 20 years. A 1998 project summary found much promise: Peak productions in test ponds, if sustained for a year, would be equivalent to more than 10,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre.

More from St. Louis Today

Scotland's future's green, but is it golden?

THE golden yellow carpet which stretches across large swathes of Scotland's farmland every spring ought to be a symbol of the vibrant future for the agricultural community.

Oil-seed rape is a key part of the biofuels revolution sweeping the globe, providing oil that can be easily turned into biodiesel. Within a few short years, enthusiasts believe, Scottish farmers will be growing millions of gallons of fuel to power the nation's cars, transforming the rural industry.

However, the reality may prove otherwise. Agriculture groups and environmental bodies, along with rapeseed farmers, have told The Scotsman they believe the idea of a national biodiesel industry is a pipe dream, a supposedly green initiative which may wreak untold ecological damage.

On paper, success looks assured. Next year, a vast, £90 million biofuel production plant will become fully operational in Grangemouth. Capable of producing about 100,000 tonnes of biodiesel a year, the INEOS Enterprises facility, backed by £9 million in regional assistance from the Scottish Executive, will meet more a third of the UK's biodiesel needs.

With farming in transition - the number of livestock kept on farms declined last year - farmers have hoped they will be able to give over ever increasing acreage to oil-seed rape. Their harvest - some 120,000 tonnes last year - would be crushed to remove its oil.

But obstacles lie ahead.

More from Scotsman.com

Britain's first zero-carbon houses - radiators not included

Sometimes it's the mundane things you notice most, and one small detail stuck in the mind particularly yesterday after viewing Britain's first two zero-carbon homes: no radiators.

Other more exotic features, from rooftop wind turbines and solar panels to grey-water recycling systems, were more glaringly obvious at the two state-of-the art houses built to generate virtually no greenhouse gas emissions in their running, and unveiled at an exhibition of new construction methods.

But in the end it was the absence of radiators that seemed to symbolise what was truly different about these homes of the near future. The Government has decreed that their like will have to be the model for all new homes from 2016.

In each case the biggest problem, in terms of countering the contribution to global warming of our housing stock - how to provide heat energy - had simply been designed out.

Completely airtight and swaddled in thick insulation - though you can't see it - both the Lighthouse, built by the building materials company Kingspan Off-site, and the Sigma, constructed by the Stewart Milne Group, need much lower levels of power than conventional homes, for space heating, water heating, lighting and running appliances, from computers to refrigerators. And in theory, virtually all of this can be provided by the renewable energy that each house generates itself.

Both went on show yesterday as part of a group of five demonstration buildings, built to the Government's new code for sustainable homes, at the innovation park of the BFE (Building Research Establishment) in Watford.

They are thought to be the most advanced homes of their type in the world. The code, a voluntary regulation introduced in April, is a measure of environmental sustainability for new houses, focusing on substantial reductions in CO2 emissions and water use. It starts to become mandatory at higher and higher levels after next year, and by 2013 new homes will have to achieve level 4 - which means 44 per cent more carbon efficient than current building regulations specify.

More from the Independent

Current Hurricane Amount at "Normal" Level, Study Says

The number of hurricanes that swirl across the Atlantic Basin has shot up in the past decade, but the increase may just be a return to normal activity after a long lull, suggests a new study.

The findings throw additional fuel onto the debate over the effects of global warming on hurricane frequency and intensity. (Related: "Global Warming Link to Hurricane Intensity Questioned" [July 28, 2006].)

Some researchers have suggested the increase in hurricane activity since 1995 is a result of climate change, whereas others contend the trend is part of natural variability.

A problem plaguing researchers is the lack of a long-term hurricane record for comparison. Reliable observations stretch back only about 50 years.

Now a team of scientists led by Johan Nyberg at the Geological Survey of Sweden in Uppsala has reconstructed the hurricane record of the past 270 years by studying the growth patterns of coral skeletons and the abundance of tiny fossils in a marine sediment core.

The record shows that hurricane activity goes up and down in decadal cycles, with storms gradually decreasing overall from the 1760s until the early 1990s. An abnormal lull of just 1.5 major storms a year was reached between the 1970s and early 1990s.

More from National Geographic News

Global Meltdown

I’m staring up at the crumbling edge of the frozen white cap cloaking most of this vast Arctic island. The ice is thousands of years old, yet melting relentlessly in the bright May sunshine, sending a torrent of gray water to the sea. With me is Joe McConnell, a snow scientist who just spent three weeks drilling samples from the ice sheet, which extends over an area four times the size of California and is almost two miles high at its peak.

McConnell, 49, an expert on the world’s frozen places, is from—of all places—the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. That incongruity isn’t so jarring when he explains that many of the world’s driest communities, from the Andes to the American Southwest, are home to the billion-plus people who get much of their water from mountain snow and glaciers.

The ice-gouged, U-shaped valleys around us, now covered with lichens and shrubs, show that the earth’s climate has changed naturally for billions of years, ever since there’s been an atmosphere. Great warmings and coolings have sent ocean levels rising and falling as enormous amounts of water were locked in glaciers or released like the flows we see here in Greenland.

But the current warming trend is happening much faster than previous hot spells, says McConnell, and none of the forces that usually affect climate—such as variations in the sun’s strength—are in sync with this recent change. Should these patterns continue, he believes, the consequences are clear. “If Greenland melted, it’d raise sea levels by twenty feet,” he explains. “There goes most of the Mississippi embayment. There go the islands in the South Pacific. Bangladesh is obliterated. Manhattan would have to put up dikes.” A similar amount of ice is vulnerable in western Antarctica, another focus of McConnell’s work. While this would most likely be a slow-motion sea change taking many centuries, gases being pumped into the atmosphere by cars, planes, factories, and power plants could raise the odds of such a shift.

More from the AARP

Floodwaters 'will breach levee'

About 4000 residents in the NSW Hunter Valley are being forced to evacuate their homes amid predictions the Hunter River will breach its levee tonight.

The State Emergency Service this afternoon issued an evacuation order for residents of central Maitland, South Maitland and Lorne following revised predictions that floodwaters would peak at five centimetres above the levee by 9pm (AEST).

Residents were being advised to be out of their homes by 8pm, SES spokesman Philip Campbell said.

"The revised flood peak of 11.4 metres is expected by 9pm and that will cause the levee to over-top,'' Mr Campbell said.

About 5000 people in the Maitland and Singleton areas have been told to evacuate since yesterday.

Police were working with the SES to evacuate the threatened areas.

Lower Hunter Police Local Area Commander, Superintendent Desmond Organ assured residents security would be provided to vacant properties.

More from the Sydney Morning Herald

Europe's seas face 'bleak future'

Europe's seas are in a "serious state of decline" as a result of coastal development, overfishing and pollution from agriculture, warn scientists.

The continent's regional seas will deteriorate even further unless action is taken to curb the threats, they add.

Economic growth and the expansion of the EU, the researchers suggested, had contributed to the state of the waters.

The findings were presented in an EU-funded report, involving more than 100 scientists from 15 nations.

The three-year project, European Lifestyles and Marine Ecosystems (ELME), examined the relationship between human activities and the impact on the region's marine ecosystems.

It focused on the continent's four regional seas: the North-East Atlantic Ocean, and the Black, Baltic and Mediterranean seas.

Human impacts on Europe's seas

"The objective was to look at the relationship between human lifestyles in a rapidly changing Europe and the marine environment," the project co-ordinator, Laurence Mee, told BBC News.

"In every sea, we found serious damage related to the accelerated pace of coastal development, transport and the way we produce our food," said Professor Mee, director of the Marine Institute at the University of Plymouth, UK.

"We thought it was important to really understand what these changes in lifestyle imply for our marine space, which is critically important for the future."

more from the BBC

Virginia isn’t prepared for rising sea, study warns

Virginia stands to lose more from rising sea levels than almost any other state on the East Coast but is doing the least to understand and combat the problem, a new study concludes.

In a report released Wednesday, the Norfolk-based environmental group Wetlands Watch cites existing scientific estimates that between 50 and 80 percent of the state's tidal wetlands, coastal dunes and beaches could disappear under rising waters over the next 100 years.

If unchecked, such losses could be catastrophic, the group describes - enough to "negate any progress made towardrestoration of the Chesapeake Bay's ecosystem." Former Gov. Jim Gil-more, who is now a Republican presidential candidate, signed the Chesapeake Bay Agreements in 2000 that, among other actions, committed Virginia to "evaluate the potential impact of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay watershed, particularly with respect to its wetlands, and consider potential management options."

That has never occurred.

more from the Virginia-Pilot

Experts: Katrina Death Toll Still Rising

NEW ORLEANS -- The bodies are no longer being dragged from houses and buildings toppled by Hurricane Katrina, but nearly two years later many in the medical community think the storm is still killing.

Storm survivors are dying from the effects of both psychological and physical stress, from the dust and mold still in dwellings to financial problems to fear of crime, health experts and officials say.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Katrina is still killing our residents," Orleans Parish coroner Dr. Frank Minyard said this week.

"People with pre-existing conditions that are made worse by the stress of living here after the storm. Old people who are just giving up. People who are killing themselves because they feel they can't go on," Minyard said.

Some say an in-depth federal analysis is needed, despite a new state report that found no significant increase in deaths in the New Orleans area from January 2006 through June 2006. The state Department of Health and Hospitals is still compiling figures for the last six months of 2006.

Dr. Raoult Ratard, the state epidemiologist, said "the only slight increase" in deaths was in the first three months of 2006 in Orleans Parish.

But New Orleans medical officials say that jump, from 11.3 per 1,000 deaths to 14.3 per 1,000, -- a leap of more than 25 percent -- was anything but slight. Moreover, the report doesn't take into account evacuees who died while away from the city and were returned for burial.

"Our death rate was already high, that's huge," said Dr. Kevin Stephens Sr., director of the New Orleans Health Department.

Some New Orleans doctors questioned the accuracy of the population figures used to determine the death rate, saying they might have been too high. DHH secretary Dr. Fred Cerise said he was comfortable with the population data, which he said came from the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The city was abandoned after Katrina struck Aug. 29, 2005, and many people did not begin returning until mid-2006.

The official death tolls in New Orleans stands at about 1,100. State health officials said deaths have not been listed as Katrina-related since the end of 2005, except for bodies found under storm wreckage. But Minyard said he believes the hurricane is still behind many deaths.

More from the Associated Press

Thunder? That's the sound of Greenland melting

ILULISSAT, Greenland - Atop Greenland's Suicide Cliff, from where old Inuit women used to hurl themselves when they felt they had become a burden to their community, a crack and a thud like thunder pierce the air.

"We don't have thunder here. But I know it from movies," says Ilulissat nurse Vilhelmina Nathanielsen, who hiked with us through the melting snow. "It's the ice cracking inside the icebergs. If we're lucky we might see one break apart."

It's too early in the year to see icebergs crumple regularly but the sound is a reminder.

As politicians squabble over how to act on climate change, Greenland's ice cap is melting, and faster than scientists had thought possible.

A new island in East Greenland is a clear sign of how the place is changing. It was dubbed Warming Island by American explorer Dennis Schmitt when he discovered in 2005 that it had emerged from under the retreating ice.

If the ice cap melted entirely, oceans would rise by 7 metres, flooding New York and London, and drowning island nations like the Maldives.

A total meltdown would take centuries but global warming, which climate experts blame mainly on human use of fossil fuels, is heating the Arctic faster than anywhere else on Earth.

More from BrisbaneTimes

Global warming is shrinking the Great Lakes

Tom Mackay reckons his backyard in Duluth shows what is happening in Lake Superior as well as any place. In November 2005, the metre-tall wooden "Bay Ness Monster" statue he installed in the water just off his home dock was submerged up to its gaping mouth. Today, his would-be water serpent is high and dry.

For residents of this lakeside Minnesota city, located more than 3000 kilometres by boat from the open Atlantic, the transformation is disturbing. Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world by surface area, is experiencing its lowest water levels since the record set in 1926. The lake is down by 34 centimetres from a year ago, and more than half a metre below its long-term mean. At least part of the drop can be attributed to a multi-year drought that has been particularly severe since 2006. More troubling, however, is evidence that global warming is driving a long-term shrinkage of this massive natural reservoir.

A rapidly warming lake is the key to understanding the change, says Jay Austin, a limnologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory. Earlier this year he reported that Superior's surface waters had warmed by about 2.5 °C since 1979 - far more than average air temperatures in the region during the same period (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 34, p L06604). Austin's findings link the warming to a reduction in winter ice cover on the lake. The less ice is present to reflect sunlight, the more solar energy the lake can absorb. On average, the onset of summer warming of the lake is happening half a day earlier each year. The reduced ice cover also contributes to shrinkage by allowing more evaporation. "Most of the evaporation goes on in winter," Austin says, as cold, dry air

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Visionary project for Sydney's first 'Eco-City' unveiled

A leading academic in urban planning and development has unveiled a prototype for Sydney's first 'Eco-City.'

Rafael Pizarro is a lecturer in Sustainable Urban Planning at the faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney.

Mr Pizarro and a team of 20 final year architecture students have spent several months designing what they call an ambitious and revolutionary plan to transform Sydney's White Bay into the state's first ecologically sound and sustainable city.

Mr Pizarro says the idea to produce a prototype for the country's first eco-city came from an urgent need to mitigate global warming in the Sydney metropolitan region.

"The idea came from the current crisis in climate change and global warming," he said.

"When this crisis became public with the Stern Report and the inter-governmental panel on climate change report, I decided that I wanted to give a new direction to my teaching, a new direction to the way I was training future designers and planners in this profession."

"So I decided to tackle this head on through the designing of cities."

The project, White Bay Eco-City, features mid to high-density solar districts, food and energy production areas, storm water run-off systems and a water recycling plant.

Residents of the eco-city would be able to get around on an internal public transport system consisting of a light tram grid and special roads for public GPS-guided 'stackable' mini-cars.

Mr Pizarro says two of the most important features of the eco-city are the internal transport system and the ability to use buildings to grow food.

"Food production not only happens in a spatial district in most of the eco-city, but also on most of the rooftops of the buildings," he said.

"We have created rooftop gardens where you can plant your vegies and in this way increasing the food supply for the eco-city while knocking out the cost and environmental impact of transporting food in and out."

"The other major feature is public transportation."

"We know that if we want to create sustainable cities, public transport is a must. So within this eco-city we have minimised, not eliminated completely, but have minimised the use of private vehicles."

"We created an internal system of public transport with a small tram that goes around the city."

"And the other system we have created, borrowed from an MIT professor who created these stackable mini cars that occupy literally very little space. They are guided by a GPS system, so you don't need to drive them. You just punch in on the screen where you want to go."

The 80 hectare site would accommodate around 15,000 people, but has the capacity to house 22,000.

Mr Pizarro says the prototype may only be a vision at this stage, but he says eco-cities like White Bay are the way of the future.

More from ABC news

California sees sprawl as warming culprit

California is pioneering what could be the next battleground against global warming: filing suit to hold cities and counties accountable for greenhouse gas emissions caused by poorly planned suburban sprawl.

The unprecedented action is being closely watched by states that have taken aggressive steps to combat climate change — including New York, Massachusetts and Washington.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sued San Bernardino County, the USA's largest in land area and one of the fastest growing, for failing to account for greenhouse gases when updating its 25-year blueprint for growth.

"It's ground-breaking. California is just leading the way for other states and jurisdictions that will ultimately follow," says Richard Frank of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy at the University of California-Berkeley.

"It's ground-breaking. California is just leading the way for other states and jurisdictions that will ultimately follow," says Richard Frank of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy at the University of California-Berkeley.

more from USA Today

Goats used to fight kudzu, the Asian 'vine that ate the South'

Summer is settling on Missionary Ridge overlooking this southeast Tennessee city. Swallows glide on the warm breeze rustling the hackberry trees, kudzu vines sprout along the hillside and the goats are back at work.

Chattanooga's goats have become unofficial city mascots since the Public Works Department decided last year to let them roam a city-owned section of the ridge to nibble the kudzu, the fast-growing vine that throttles the Southern landscape.

The goats and the project's tragicomic turns have created headlines, inspired a folk ballad and invoked more than their share of goat-themed chuckles.

"Usually, in dealing with this, you've got to get people past the laugh factor," said Jerry Jeansonne, a city forestry inspector and the program's self-described "goat dude."

Despite the humorous overtones, the program represents an environmentally friendly effort to grapple with a real problem in Chattanooga and the southeastern United States. Kudzu, which is native to Asia, was introduced in the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, according to the U.S. Forest Service. It arrived in the South several years later, becoming a popular ornamental vine, then a forage and erosion-control crop. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the government paid farmers to plant it.

more from the International Herald Tribune

Delta islands may become first casualties of warming

For 20 years, Jim Saathoff has built his private refuge from the urban hustle, making his home on an island in the vast freshwater delta that feeds into San Francisco Bay.

Water skiers ply the gray-green river within view of his front porch. A short walk from his home, he can cast off to fish for sturgeon, salmon and striped bass. His two children ran wild exploring the farm fields, marinas and hideaways of the fertile islands where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers twine.

Saathoff's idyllic life may not last forever. By the time his 11-year-old grandson is ready to have children of his own, scientists predict the Delta's network of islands will be imperiled by the rising tides and mountain flood waters caused by global climate change.

Some islands sit 25 feet below sea level, kept dry onlyby an aging network of fragile levees that channel snowmelt from the Sierra and hold back tidal surges from the Bay.

Geologists say the 5,000 residents of the nation's lowest inhabited point near a coastline could be forced out, becoming the first climate change refugees in the United States.

"If global warming keeps up, in a few years this will be waterfront property," said Saathoff, 56, a steamfitter who has raised his house onto an iron platform 20 feet above ground. "We'll just be able to drive the boat up and dock right off the porch."

The majority of the U.S. population lives along a coastline. In the next 50 years, rising tides are expected to swallow islands in Chesapeake Bay, drown parts of the Louisiana coast and threaten the New York subway system, recent data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows.

But USGS scientists say the coastal effects of global warming may be felt first among the islands of California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

more from the AP via the Alameda (CA) Times-Star

Growing Green Roofs, City by City

Green roofs—rooftops that are partially or completely covered with vegetation growing in soil medium over a waterproof membrane—have gained momentum over the past six years as building owners recognize their advantages over conventional roofing in terms of better energy efficiency and reduced rain runoff. Now local governments are exploring incentives for moving the practice into the mainstream. A look at cities that are leading the country in green roof coverage reveals a growing range of policy tools.



Alexi Boado, low-impact development coordinator for Washington, DC's District Department of the Environment (DDOE), says the city began seriously examining green roofs for stormwater control five years ago, when the DC Water and Sewer Authority provided $300,000 for green roof development as part of a court-ordered settlement. Those funds, managed by the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation, seeded a program of incentive grants that encouraged eight builders to choose green roofs over other traditional devices as their primary stormwater control device (stormwater control plans are required for any new construction or redevelopment of more than 5,000 square feet in the District). Builders also have a procedural incentive: designs that include a green roof in the stormwater control plan receive expedited processing.

To build local engineering design and green construction capacity and catalyze interest in green roofs, the DDOE is working with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to offer almost $800,000 in complete design-and-build services for select public and commercial properties. This program is slated to begin in the summer of 2007. In addition, as part of a cash grants program, DDOE and its sister agencies are in the process of installing green roofs on three new community recreation centers, two public schools, and one housing development. Previous grants have subsidized some of the first green roofs in the District, as well as the implementation of many other innovative stormwater control practices such as rain gardens and permeable surfaces. The District allotted about $500,000 in 2007 to innovative stormwater control grants in addition to the Natural Resources Conservation Service partnership.

Dawn Gifford, program coordinator of the nonprofit DC Greenworks, has seen a shift in green roof installations from mainly commercial buildings to a mix of commercial and residential. DC Greenworks has dedicated itself to installing green roofs throughout the city; a high-profile demo model they installed at 1425 K Street NW in 2004 has drawn more than 3,000 visitors and inspired similar projects across the metropolitan area.

Doug Siglin, director of federal affairs for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, explains the public policy perspective behind the interest in green roofs: one problem in the Anacostia River, which runs through Washington, DC, and in the bay generally, is too much erosion, with silt increasing water turbidity. Most erosion comes from stormwater runoff; green roofs help moderate that blast of runoff from precipitation events, and therefore help local governments deal with rainwater by detaining, retaining, and absorbing it where it first hits.

Chicago officials see another public health benefit in moderating the city's "heat island" effect (defined as urban and suburban areas having temperatures up to 10°F higher than nearby rural sites). Heat islands spike energy demands, air pollution levels, and heat-related illnesses such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke. With climate change, says Sadhu Johnston, the city's commissioner for the environment, Chicago can expect hotter and drier summers—conditions that the heat island effect will only exacerbate.

Johnston says green roofs can help avert heat wave–related deaths, citing studies that show lower temperatures on green roofs compared with traditional roofs, and reduced air-conditioning use in buildings with green roofs. According to the 2004 Green Roof Test Plot 2003 End of Year Project Summary Report by environmental engineering firm MWH, which is posted on the City of Chicago website, the mean temperature of green roof areas in the heat of the day (between 12:30 and 4:30 pm) was up to 31% cooler than other roof types.

more from Environmental Health Perspectives