3p Contributor: Richard Levangie
Recent Articles
Plastic Made With Wheat Straw Cuts Ford’s Petroleum Use
For years, Ford has been experimenting with materials to cut its petroleum use, and the 2010 Ford Flex will showcase the latest fruits of its labor. The Flex’s third-row storage bin will have a 20 percent wheat straw-based plastic content.
While the change may seem small, it will cut manufacturing petroleum by 10 tons and CO2 emissions by 15 tons, and cut the storage bin’s weight by 10 percent — thereby saving the end consumer a small amount of fuel, as well. Similarly, in late September, Ford announced that it is now using soy-based foam in seat cushions and backs and interior roof covers, a change that saved 750 tons of petroleum in the manufacturing process. The soy foam is also 25 percent lighter than petroleum foam.
Sinautec Makes Ultracapacitors Work
Ultracapacitors are the Holy Grail of clean transportation: they’re powerful, they’re reliable, they’re relatively inexpensive and they charge in minutes. But they also discharge in minutes, and that’s the problem companies like EEStor and Altair Nano are working furiously to combat. Even the best ultracapacitors have about five percent of the average lithium-ion battery’s storage capacity.
But Sinautec Automobile Technologies, a capacitor company based in Arlington, Virginia, has decided to to turn the technology’s weakness into its advantage. Along with Chinese partner Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Limited Corporation, Sinautec has developed an ultracapacitor-powered bus that charges quickly every few stops. A collector on the bus roof extends to overhead power lines, and in minutes the batteries — called banks — charge fully.
Climate Scientists: “Inaction Is Inexcusable”
Global warming deniers often suggest that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report is a political document, and they’re partially right — but not in the way that they might think. The report is conservative by nature, relying on studies that were largely published before 2005, and the picture it paints is far rosier than it should be.
Over the last five years, study after peer-reviewed study has suggested that the Fourth Assessment Report is already out-of-date, and global warming is barreling along.
So it’s worthwhile to reconsider the science on this, Blog Action Day. Luckily for me, I don’t have to do the heavy lifting. Leading experts have made good on a promise to update the climate change science in advance of Copenhagen, and they’re telling politicians that humanity is risking “abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts” from the accelerating pace of global warming. Rising global surface and ocean temperatures, surging sea levels, extreme weather events, and the retreat of Arctic sea ice* are all coming harder and faster than research suggested five or 10 years ago. The takeaway message is that politicians had better find a way to work together at the next international climate summit in December — or shortly after — or the results will be devastating.
Buying Time: Cutting Non-CO2 Pollutants Will Slow Climate Change
Climate change isn’t only about carbon dioxide. So that’s why, in a world that is stepping close to a steep precipice, doing more to reduce non-CO2 climate change contributors such as black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), as well as expanding bio-sequestration through biochar production, might head global warming off at the pass, according to Nobel Laureate Dr. Mario Molina and co-authors in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The authors argue that this novel perspective could transform the debate at United Nations climate change conference slated for Copenhagen in December.
Cutting Emissions Immediately Is an Economic Imperative, Study Says
A new analysis by university economists suggests that we need to start fighting climate change now, while we can still afford it. But if we take the cautious approach advocated by some well-known academics, mitigating climate change will put us in the poor house.
The Economics of 350, a detailed study put forth by Economics for Equity and the Environment (E3), weighed the cost of keeping global CO2 concentrations at 350 parts per million — an ambitious target that’s already in the rearview mirror. And that cost would cut between one and three percent off GDP. That might seem steep, but it’s nothing compared to what’s coming down the turnpike if we fail to act.
The study strongly suggests that economists such as William Nordhaus of Yale University have it backwards when they suggest we should start tackling climate change with modest measures, and ramp up our efforts when advances in technology make it affordable and economies have grown to absorb the costs.
Hotter, Faster: New Report Slices Decades From Warming Scenarios
Are people in the U.S. illiterate when it comes to climate change?
Just days after Rasmussen reported that 47 percent of U.S. citizens suggested that it was OK to put the economy before climate change concerns, one of the key advisors to the German government suggested that North Americans know less about climate change than just about anyone else in the world.
Professor John Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, is one of the world’s foremost climate experts. On the sidelines at a climate conference at Oxford University, he predicted that it will be several years before the U.S. will be able to get its house — or perhaps Senate — in order to join the world in cutting emissions. And until that happens, says Schellnhuber, developing countries like India and China won’t set hard emission targets. It’s a dangerous Catch-22. He’s hoping that most G20 economies will reach some measure of an agreement at Copenhagen, and the U.S. and Canada will follow in a few years time.
BMW Plug-In Diesel Concept Wows Europe
As concepts go, it’s quite a concept. When BMW moved its Formula 1 engineers to a program that would develop cleaner, greener automobiles, many were skeptical, but the Vision Efficientdynamics Concept (VEC) that was shown at the Frankfurt auto show this month should change a few minds. The slick design features a 356-horsepower AWD plug-in diesel-hybrid concept that can go 31 miles on battery power alone. It also has a top speed of 155 mph, can accelerate to 60 in just 4.8 seconds, and bests the Prius by emitting just 99 g of CO2 per km (while attaining 62.2 mpg).
Age of Stupid Inspires UK Campaign to Dramatically Cut Emissions
10:10 Campaign
The Age of Stupid was more than just a disturbing film -— for many it was a serious call to action.
At a September launch in Great Britain, Age of Stupid Director Franny Armstrong unveiled the 10:10 Campaign to great fanfare at the Tate Museum, with thousands of individuals and businesses promising to cut their emissions by 10 percent by 2010 to make a real, measurable, and immediate difference in the fight against global warming. The Guardian — the world’s best newspaper for environmental and climate change coverage — signed on as a media sponsor, and many celebrities added their voices to the clamor.
Global Burning? How the Words We Choose Affect the Perception of Crises
Would we be doing more to save the planet from global warming if we had better phrasing? Jonathan Watts asks that question at The Guardian when he notes that the only time that governments have been able to overcome their pettiness was when scientists warned about an unexpected “hole in the ozone layer.”
It seemed to have a profound and galvanizing effect, and the level of intergovernmental cooperation that ensued was unprecedented.
Diplomatic Unease On The Menu At UN Climate Talks
It sounds like it may have been inspired by Oxfam’s Hunger Banquet, and it will be interesting to see how it works. Mandarins at the United Nations will be subjecting world leaders to a little diplomatic shock therapy at today’s UN climate negotiations in an effort to inject a greater sense of urgency into the proceedings. As recently as the G8 Summit in Italy, world leaders were speaking about good intentions, and hopeful signs, but most pundits acknowledge that climate talks to find a successor to Kyoto are in deep trouble. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting in New York this week, and they’ll either break the logjam — or remain at loggerheads.
UN officials, tired by the status quo, have devised a pared-down program that should promote real communication.
Investors Call For Strong International Climate Treaty
In advance of the UN climate conference in the Big Apple, a number of ethical investment groups representing more than $13 trillion in assets have called for climate leadership from the world’s industrial nations. At the International Investor Forum on Climate Change, a coalition of 181 investors expressed confidence that a strong and binding international treaty is vital to combating global warming and catalyzing the massive global investments needed to transition to a low-carbon world.
“We must chart a new course toward long-term, sustainable business practices,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, head of the $116.5 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund. “We cannot drag our feet on the issue of global climate change. I am deeply concerned about the investor risks climate change presents, and the human cost of inaction is unthinkable. As investors in the global economy, we can lead the way toward a future of lasting prosperity.”
Tar Sands Emissions Make Canada A Carbon Bully
Author John Updike once described Canada as a cool, chaste country, but that’s not how Greenpeace sees it. Earlier this week, the environmental warriors issued a harsh report that described Canada an international carbon bully.
Sooner or later, that description is going to stick. Over the last two and a half years, several different environmental groups have used that exact word to characterize one of the world’s most peaceful nations, and they do have a few inconvenient facts to buttress their claims. In the Greenpeace report called Dirty Oil: How The Tar Sands Are Fuelling the Global Climate Crisis author Andrew Nikiforuk argues that Canada has been working with Japan to deliberately undermine progress at the international climate talks for several years. Certainly, that devil could be in the details. The Alberta Tar Sands already release more greenhouse gases than several smaller European nations and — if planned expansion to 2020 goes ahead — the tar sands alone will produce more greenhouse gases annually than either Austria, Ireland, or Belgium.
API’s Faux Grassroots Campaign Draws Greenpeace’s Ire
God bless Greenpeace.
Faced with a multimillion dollar media juggernaut devised by the American Petroleum Institute (API), Greenpeace countered with simplicity and honesty: A grassroots campaign that speaks the truth to power, and turns up the heat on oil executives.
To cut to the chase, last week Greenpeace came to possess an API memo that described an expensive misinformation campaign — under the banner of Energy Citizen rallies — in great detail.
To their credit, API execs admitted that the email was authentic — perhaps because it was ready to launch — and that the $45 million initiative is designed to look like a grassroots rally, and not a staged event run by an experienced marketing company. It’s all about optics, and getting on the nightly news.
And that’s about as fair as I can be to API.
While the Oceans Gently Weep: Climate Change & Marine Life
Global warming has serious consequences for the international fishing community, but I’m also concerned that our soaring sense of wonder about something greater than ourselves might also be at risk.
A study published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that individual fish have lost half their average body mass, that fish populations have thinned drastically, and that smaller species are starting to dominate European fish stocks. Although overfishing probably played a significant role, the long, steady increase in fresh water and ocean temperatures caused by global warming takes the lion’s share of the blame.
“It’s huge,” said study author Martin Daufresne of the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France. “Size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity – - the capacity to reproduce.”
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