1. Dakyung Lee 2. Energy and Bottled Waters 3. The article described the process for producing bottled water. This made me realize that it was not just the excessive usage of plastic that was creating a problem but also the energy that is used up in the actual production process of bottled water. For example, the energy that is used to produce the bottles from plastic, to treat the water, to fill and cap the bottles and to transport them. The fact that bottled water sales surpassed 200 billion liters around the globe and that there was a 70% rise in the bottled water sales in the U.S made me imagine how much oil had to be used. It made me think about all the energy that is needed to produce the bottled waters and the financial cost and environmental impact behind the production process. One of the most important points the writer mentioned was regarding individual choices. For college students, like myself, bottled water seems to be something that we purchase on a regular basis. Even when I visit convenient stores, I see a huge selection of different bottled waters and teas. While they may be convenient, I realized that we need to all make individual efforts to minimize the consumption of plastic bottled waters. For example, one can purchase a nalgene bottle and fill up water in the water dispensers available around campus and dorms. Another solution would be to reuse old bottles instead of throwing the bottles after using it only once. Overall, this article showed how understanding the energy cost behind the production process is crucial. With little effort and time, I believe that we can all contribute in reducing the overusage of energy and conserve the environment. -------------------------------------- Our bottled water habit has a huge environmental impact, including the amount of energy it takes to make the plastic bottles, fill them and ship them to thirsty consumers worldwide.
A new study breaks down just how much energy is used at each step of the process.
An estimated total of the equivalent of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil was required to generate the energy to produce the amount of bottled water consumed in the United States in 2007, according to the study, detailed in the January-March issue of the journal Environmental Research Letters. Of course, this is but a third of a percent of the energy that the United States consumes as a whole in a year.
In 2007, the last year for which global statistics were available, more than 200 billion liters of bottled water were sold around the world, mostly in North America and Europe. The total amount sold in the United States alone that year (33 billion liters) averages out to about 110 liters (almost 30 gallons) of water per person, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
Since 2001, bottled water sales have increased by 70 percent in the United States, far surpassing those of milk and beer. Only sodas have larger sales.
The energy required to produce bottled water is particularly of interest now, at a time when many nations are looking for ways to reduce their energy use and associated climate impacts.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan research institute, and his colleague Heather Cooley recently realized that no one had done a comprehensive survey of the energy use involved in the complete production cycle of bottled water, so they took on the task.
Plastic and transportation
The energy use breaks down into roughly four parts of the production cycle: that used to make the plastic and turn it into bottles, to treat the water, to fill and cap the bottles, and finally to transport them.
"Energy is used in a lot of different phases," Gleick said.
Most plastic bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Little pellets of PET are melted and fused together to make the bottle mold. Gleick and Cooley estimated that about 1 million tons of PET were used to make plastic bottles in the United States in 2007, with 3 million tons used globally; the energy used to produce that global amount of PET and the bottles it was turned into was equivalent to about 50 billion barrels of oil, they found.
(Some companies have been shifting toward using lighter-weight plastics for their bottles, which reduces the amount of PET produced by about 30 percent and would therefore lower the amount of energy required to make them. The transition to less energy-intensive plastic is slow though, and not all companies use them.)
The amount of energy involved in that first step was a surprise to Gleick: "I didn’t know how much energy it takes to make plastic or turn plastic into a bottle," he told LiveScience.
The energy required to treat water is substantially less and depends on how many treatments are used on the water and doesn't account for the bulk of the energy spent in production. Likewise, the energy used to clean, fill, seal and label the bottles is only about 0.34 percent of the energy built into the bottle itself.
The energy used to transport the bottled water depends mainly on how far it is shipped and what transportation method is used. Air cargo is the costliest energy method, followed by truck, cargo ship and rail shipping, in that order. A different study on the carbon footprint of wine also found this breakdown of energy use for transportation methods.
In their study, Gleick and Cooley used the examples of different types of water shipped to Los Angeles: water produced locally and shipped by truck involved the least amount of energy, followed by water sent by cargo ship from Fiji, with water produced in France and shipped by cargo ship and rail having the highest energy costs.
Individual choices
The final tally of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil may be only about a third of a percent of the total U.S. energy consumption, but it could be considered an "unnecessary use of energy," Gleick said. (Roughly three times as much oil would have been needed to produce the global amount of bottled water consumed.)
The amount is 2,000 times more than is required to make tap water, "and we live in a country where we have very good tap water," Gleick said.
Gleick said that the purpose of the study was not to propose that bottled water be banned, but to help consumers "understand the implications of our choices." With the information on the energy impacts, "we may choose to do different things as individuals," he added.
Understanding the energy costs of the process also sheds light on the greenhouse gases that energy use emits. "Energy is sort of the first piece of the puzzle," Gleick said.
3. I remember somebody said that when bees are extinct, human beings can't also live. Since, as the article says, bees play a vital role in making sure we have the food we need. It is just one of a living creature. However every single forms of live have their own function in this world. I think this is very important and also what the human has neglected. To be more enviornmental friendly or extremely said to survive, in my opinion, people should get out of humancentric thoughts. Personally I think it is very dangerous one. I don't mean that people should not respect themselves or others. Just please consider a little bit that other creatures are also there, that they also breathe like us. (I am not sure, but I think) This kind of topic can also lead to 'animal rights'. Actually I am against the experiment animal. People don't have the right, is my opinion. And I don't think these ecperiments don't lead to the right to pursue one's happiness. It is true that the technique will improve but when a disease can be cured. Another kind of illness will come out. I think it's a vicious circle.
----------------------------------- Honeybee bonanza at GloryBee in Eugene
By Arrianee LeBeau KVAL News Video EUGENE, Ore - For several years beekeepers have been reporting a drop in adult honey bees called Colony Collapse Disorder. But some people at GloryBee Foods Factory are working to make sure bees survive the test of time.
The numbers reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture since 2006 said beekeepers are seeing a 30 to 90 percent drop in the number of honeybees.
At the kickoff of Bee Weekend, droves of people scrabbled inside the GloryBee Foods factory store. People hurried to pick up supplies to start building their own beehives.
"I am picking up my colony of bees. It's a queen with I guess 6,000 bees," Carol Richmond said.
Richmond took a beekeeping class at Lane Community College. She said she wants to harvest her own honey and help keep honeybees from dying off. So today she picked up her own bees and their queen to start making her hive.
Dick Turanski is the founder of GloryBee Foods and demonstrated how to care for bees. He said properly showing people how to care for bees can help prevent large numbers of them from dying. He said bees play a vital role in making sure we have the food we need.
"Bees are most importantly the environmental barometer of how things are doing in nature. Bees are important for the agricultural production of crops," Turanski said.
While most of those at Bee Weekend were trained keepers, Turanski says educating people about the importance of bees can help keep them alive.
According to the the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there is no one main cause for Colony Collapse Disorder. Research is still being done to figure out why the large number of adult honey bees is declining.
GloryBee Foods Bee Weekend will run through Saturday April 11th from 8:30AM until 2PM. You can learn about honey bees and taste some fresh honey for free.
3. I chose this article since today is Easter Sunday. This is a short article talking about how April and May are the months that people use least amount of energy. The reason is because daylight hours grow longer and the weather becomes moderate. We tend to use less lighting and heating. However, it means that summer is coming and we will need to use a lot of energy for air-conditioning.
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On the evening of March 28, people around the globe turned off their lights in observation of “Earth Hour” — an event aimed at drawing attention to energy conservation. But it’s actually a bit later in the year — usually April or May — when Americans, with little fanfare, use the least amount of energy. Indeed, in terms of daytime usage between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., the day of the year with the lowest electricity consumption has fallen in April or May every year since 2000, according to New England’s grid operator. The single lowest energy-use day has coincided with Easter Sunday on three of those years. “Temperatures moderate and the daylight hours grow longer in the months of April and May,” said Erin O’Brien, a spokeswoman for I.S.O.-New England, the grid operator, in an e-mail message. “This combination prompts customers and business to use less electricity for heating, cooling and lighting.” Because of the lull in demand, many power plants often shut down for maintenance, ahead of the hot, air-conditioned summer. Said Paul Rosengren, a spokesman for P.S.E.G., an energy company based in New Jersey: “Spring is a time when you try to get a lot of your summer prep done.”
1. Kyuhee Shim 2. Bioengineering 3. It seems not long ago climate change was still a controversy. Against the majority of the scientific community who tried to alert the international community of the fate of our planet, I remember how the Bush administration instead tried to dub global warming as a myth. But now the crisis has become undeniable, and we can’t waste any more time. The Obama administration has raised hopes that the environment would be placed at the top of the agenda for his term in office. I’m not sure how much President Obama is bent on solving our environmental problems, but this article tells me that at least Omaba’s scientific advisor is well aware of how urgent these issues have become. But I have doubts about this idea for geo-engineering. It seems to be considered by the administration as a last resort in case we are unable to find a remedy for the melting ice caps. I feel pretty divided about this policy. On one hand I am relieved to see that finally the US government has realized how serious our environmental problems have become, and it is true that we must begin to consider our options in case of a worst case scenario. On the other hand I think the administration should first make an effort to solve our environmental problems before searching for desperate measure that may actually worsen the problem. For example, cloud seeding may put a cap on the rising temperatures of the earth, but it will have the reverse effect of increasing the levels of CO2 which is the reason temperatures are rising in the first place. Bio-engineering fails to attack the root causes of our predicament. I think the entire idea is a cowardly cop out by the Obama administration. Why don’t we instead shift our focus on ways to completely rid of the polluting industry structures once and for all, and look for alternative sustainable ways to manufacture our products, generate our energy, and drive our cars? I have heard of many possible solutions to these problems but many are being shot down before given a fair chance. Biochar, a topic I posted about last week, was just opposed in an international declaration this week. I feel that biochar, and many technologies being developed, shouldn’t be abandoned because of a few flaws. ---------------------------------------------------- 4. Obama climate adviser open to geo-engineering to tackle global warming Mooted geo-engineering fixes for climate change include placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth. Photograph: Blue Line Pictures/Getty Images The global warming situation has become so dire that Barack Obama's chief scientific adviser has raised with the president the possibility of massive-scale technological fixes to alter the climate known as 'geo-engineering'. John Holdren, who is a member of the president's cabinet, said today the drastic measures should not be "off the table" in discussions on how best to tackle climate change. While his office insisted that he was not proposing a dramatic switch in policy, Holdren said geo-engineering could not be ruled out. "It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table," Holdren said in an interview with Associated Press. He made clear these were his personal views. The suite of mega-technological fixes includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth, to fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Another option is to seed clouds which bounce the sun's rays back into space so they do not warm the Earth's surface. Such global-scale technological solutions to climate change may seem fantastical, but increasing numbers of scientists argue that the technologies should at least be investigated. Holdren's comments do not mean that the US government is raising the priority of geo-engineering. A spokesman for the US Government's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) - which Holdren directs - said "the administration's primary focus is still to seek comprehensive energy legislation that can get us closer to a clean energy economy, and can create green jobs while reducing dependence on foreign oil." Advocates of the technology have welcomed the comments. Stephen Salter, an engineer at Edinburgh University and a pioneer of techniques to seed clouds so that they reflect the Sun's rays back into space, said: "Everyone working in geo-engineering works with some reluctance: we hope it'll never be needed, but we fear it might be needed very very urgently. Holden is echoing that exactly. It's very encouraging – we've had extremely negative reactions from the UK governments." Salter said that geo-engineering techniques were the only methods that would lower world temperatures quickly enough. Even if the world stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, he said, the world would continue to get hotter for several decades. "Opponents say it would take the pressure off getting the renewables developed. I've been working on renewables since 1973 and stopped because we're too late, we wasted too much time. We may have a panic very soon because of the way the Arctic ice is going." Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr, however, has said: "The wider point is not the pros and cons of particular technologies, but that the scientific community is becoming so scared of our collective inability to tackle climate emissions that such outlandish schemes are being considered for serious study. We already have the technology and know-how to make dramatic cuts in global emissions - but it's not happening, and those closest to the climate science are coming near to pressing the panic button." Holdren acknowledged that some of the potential geo-engineering solutions could have side effects, and that such actions should not be taken lightly. Though cloud-seeding, for example, would cool the earth, it would also lead to more acidic oceans, since the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - and therefore the CO2 absorbed into the seas - would keep increasing. But Holdren added: "We might get desperate enough to want to use it." His comments seemed to go against those he made in a speech to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. There, he highlighted geo-engineering's potential to help cool the atmosphere or to remove greenhouse gases, but acknowledged the methods would likely require significant investment, and also warned against expecting a single technological solution to solve energy and climate problems. "Belief in technological miracles is generally a mistake," he said. Writing last year in a special edition of the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions that was dedicated to geo-engineering, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge said: "While such geo-scale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing. There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium." In a series of papers, experts said that a reluctance "at virtually all levels" to address rising greenhouse gas emissions meant carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were on track to pass 650 parts per million, which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They called for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the earth. ------------------------------------------- 5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/08/geo-engineering-john-holdren
1. Yoon HyeSung 2. Plastic 'diet' found in leatherback turtles Necropsy reports show a third of specimens had it in their digestive system 3. I haven't heard about 'leatherback turtles' before. I like turtles, but I didn't know that a leatherback turtle is a kind of turtles. Surely, there are many environmental problems due to plastics. Before I read this article, I've already seen a video about a problem like this. In the video, I saw birds dying because of plastics. When floating plastics are gathered, it looks like an island. So, the birds think that it is an island, and they eat plastics on it. It was so terrible. And now I really feel that plastics we've thrown away are having negative effects on the environment. They kill animals. This situation is getting worse and worse. I think that there aren't much effort to solve this problem. How can we help those animals? What is the fundamental cause of this? Perhaps people's desire made the environment ill. It's time to recover the environment. --------------------- Leatherback turtles are ancient creatures with a modern problem: Plastic.
A new study looked at necropsy reports of more than 400 leatherbacks that have died since 1885 and found plastic in the digestive systems of more than a third of the animals. Besides plastic bags, the turtles had swallowed fishing lines, balloon fragments, spoons, candy wrappers and more.
Plastic was probably not the cause of death in most cases. Nevertheless, the study is an important wake-up call for a growing garbage problem.
"Eating something that is plastic can't be good for you, whether it leads to death or not," said Mike James, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "It's not what they should be eating. And it's kind of scary that it is showing up in their diet to the extent that it is."
Leatherback turtles are critically endangered and highly charismatic creatures. They are big, weighing 1,000 pounds or more, with shells that can measure more than 6 feet across. These peaceful creatures have had the same basic body plan for 150 million years.
Leatherbacks are also popular for what they eat: namely, large quantities of jellyfish. The problem is that plastic bags look a lot like jellyfish, and plastic often ends up in the oceans, piling up in areas where currents -- and turtles -- converge. That led James to wonder how much often the turtles were swallowing plastic in their hunt for yummy jellyfish.
Collecting the data was a painstaking process. James and colleagues spent two years searching far and wide for turtle necropsy reports. They scanned the literature, and they asked people to dig up old field-notebooks. For every report found, they had to make sure that a complete necropsy had been performed and that the entire GI tract had been opened.
The researchers ended up with a sample size of 408 turtles, stranded at some point during the last 125 years. Of those, 138 -- or 34 percent -- contained plastic. Alongside the rise in plastic production, there has been a sharp rise in plastic-containing turtles since the 1950s.
That finding isn't surprising, given the leatherback's jellyfish-based diet, said Christopher Sasso, a research fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Miami.
But the numbers are alarming. Plastic can block a turtle's gut, causing bloating, interfering with digestion, and leading to a slow, painful death. "I can't imagine it's very comfortable," he said. "Their guts weren't designed to digest plastic."
There are vast fields of trash floating in the world's oceans, Sasso added. And leatherback turtles travel thousands of miles each year, giving them even more opportunities to come in contact with it.
"This is an animal that has survived many extinction events," James said, "And now it's got all these anthropogenic hazards to face."
That's where people come in. Simple choices -- like putting balloons and picnic supplies in the trash and using canvas instead of plastic grocery bags -- can help leatherbacks and other marine creatures survive long into the future.
3. I've always seen the wealthy as obstacles that continue to keep us from actively reducing the destruction of our environment. Those millionaires and their CO2-emitting factories and their private jets and their rainforest-destroying business plans and their oil companies and their safes full of money! Really, I've only ever viewed the 'rich' as snobby people who live for luxury, leave behind a significantly larger carbon-footprint, and don't give a darn about the environment. But lo and behold, the rich are actually trying to help! Well, some of them, at least.
Here we have some wealthy people using their money for the welfare of the planet. Who would have thought that someone, one single person, had bought a whole stretch of rain forest area for the sole reason of preserving it? Sure, we hear of wildlife preservation parks, but those are usually funded by certain groups or governments.
I like the word created to describe these rich people who really do care for the environment: eco-barons (sounds pretty spiffy if you ask me). Of course, this doesn't mean that we, the significantly NOT-RICH, should just relax on our little sofas and leave everything up to the 'big guys'- no, I believe we should continue to try and do whatever we can to 'save' our planet. It's just nice to hear that some of the people we had thought of as powerful but irresponsible are actually taking some effective steps towards a greener future.
------------------------------------------------ Friday, Mar. 13, 2009 When the Super-Rich Go Green, They Do It Big By Bryan Walsh
The very rich are different from you and me. For one thing, their carbon footprints are bigger. Between their private jets, fleets of cars and large (often multiple) houses, the wealthy tend to suck up more than their fair share of the earth's resources. And that's not even counting the environmental impact of the businesses that built their bank accounts.
But as Edward Humes makes clear in his new book Eco-Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet, a high income-tax bracket gives the rich another advantage: a platform on which they can advance the causes that matter to them. And believe it or not, a surprising number of super-wealthy Americans are using their money to fight for what Humes calls "a secret plan to save the earth." (See the top 10 green stories of 2008.)
These are Humes' "eco-barons" — the modern-day counterpart to the 19th century robber barons who helped set the U.S. on its resource-gobbling path — and they're using their vast wealth and will to help protect the earth's quickly vanishing wilderness. The eco-barons' mission, Humes says, became all the more important when Washington shrank from its role as environmental guardian. "In an era in which government has been either broke, indifferent or actively hostile to environmental causes," writes Humes, "a band of visionaries ... are using their wealth, their energy, their celebrity and their knowledge of law and science to persuade, and sometimes force, the United States and the world to take a new direction." (Listen to Humes on this week's Greencast.)
In his book, Humes profiles an assortment of eco-barons, from businessmen to inventors, and discovers that what binds them is, he says, a "clear view of the insanity attached to the way we live." Doug Tompkins, who founded the clothing line Esprit — and then left it behind for conservation in the 1990s while it was still wildly successful — is the quintessential eco-baron and the source of Hume's best writing. Tompkins was always an outdoor adventurer — even while heading up Esprit, he would regularly disappear for months-long trips to the forests of South America — so when he burned out in the corporate world, Tompkins took his fortune, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and began steadily buying acre after acre of threatened virgin forest in Chile. But he met with considerable resistance from the Chilean government and media: the idea of a rich gringo going down to South America to protect nature, not exploit it, seemed so absurd to post-Pinochet Chileans that they suspected Tompkins was up to something.
He was, but it wasn't what the Chileans thought. Tompkins and his wife Kristine DeWitt, the former CEO of the ultragreen clothing company Patagonia, were planning to create a nature sanctuary in the middle of Chilean rain forest. Slowly, gradually, as Humes aptly chronicles, they convinced the government that they wanted nothing more than to protect one of the most beautiful and heretofore untouched stretches of forest in the world — what the Chilean poet Mario Miranda Soussi once called the "Patagonia of infinite land and water." Today Tompkins and his wife own 2 million acres in Chile and Argentina centered on the private nature sanctuary of Pumalin Park, which Tompkins plans to turn over to the Chilean people eventually. "He's preserved more rain forest than anyone else on Earth," says Humes.
Eco-Barons profiles other do-gooders, including Andy Frank, who created the plug-in hybrid car, but those stories are less compelling than Humes' description of Tompkins. The book starts to feel repetitive as we're introduced to one extraordinary green after another. But Humes' ultimate point is well taken: at the very moment when the government began abdicating its responsibilities to the environment, the eco-barons stepped in. "We'd be years behind where we are now without these individuals," says Humes. (Read about Chevy's electric car.)
We may no longer need them to lead the way, now that the Obama Administration has promised the country that its environmental agencies are back on the job. And in a recession, there will be few barons, eco- or otherwise, left standing. But even with a friend in the White House, the environmental movement still faces hurdles, from oil companies to civic passivity, so there will always be a role for those with the will — and sometimes the wealth — to make a difference.
1. Claire Cambier 2. Cows With Gas: India's Global Warming Problem 3. This article interested be because although I knew cows' gas had a lot of methane, I never thought the problem was to this extent. People are actually making a lot of efforts to try reducing the quantity of methane released by indian cows, which are not only numerous but also not well fed. As the article shows, culture can have a great importance on the way people of one country influence the environment. And in trying to devise ways of solving the problem, one also has to consider culture, because one method can be easily to apply to one culture but not as useful to another one.
------------------------------------ 4.Cows With Gas: India's Global Warming Problem By Madhur Singh / New Delhi Saturday, Apr. 11, 2009 . Indolent cows languidly chewing their cud while befuddled motorists honk and maneuver their vehicles around them are images as stereotypically Indian as saffron-clad holy men and the Taj Mahal. Now, however, India's ubiquitous cows — of which there are 283 million, more than anywhere else in the world — have assumed a more menacing role as they become part of the climate change debate. By burping, belching and excreting copious amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide — India's livestock of roughly 485 million (including sheep and goats) contribute more to global warming than the vehicles they obstruct. With new research suggesting that emission of methane by Indian livestock is higher than previously estimated, scientists are furiously working at designing diets to help bovines and other ruminants eat better, stay more energetic and secrete lesser amounts of the offensive gas. (See pictures of India's largest ruminant: the Asian elephant.) Last month, scientists at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad in western India published a pan-India livestock methane emission inventory, the first ever, which put the figure at 11.75 million metric tons per year, higher than 9 million metric tons estimated in 1994. This amount is likely to increase as higher incomes and consumption rates put more pressure on the country's dairy industry to become even more productive. (See pictures of China's cow town.) Already the world's largest producer of milk, India will have to yank up production from the current 100 million metric tons to 180 million metric tons by 2021-22 to keep pace with growing population and expanding disposable incomes. Livestock such as cows, buffalo, goats, sheep, horses and mules are indispensable to India's rural economy — whether yoked to plow land, raised for milk and manure, or harnessed to pull carts to move goods and people. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that the animals contribute 5.3% to total GDP, up from 4.8% during 1980-81. But, says Dr. K.K. Singhal, head of Dairy Cattle Nutrition at the National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal in northern India, "while livestock plays a crucial role in the economy, global warming is becoming a huge worry. We're trying to find indigenous solutions, because our realities are very different from the West." (See the 10 things you should know about the world's cheapest car: India's Nano.) For starters, most Indian livestock is underfed and undernourished, unlike robust counterparts in richer countries. The typical Indian farmer is unable to buy expensive dietary supplements even for livestock of productive age, and dry milch cattle and older farm animals are invariably turned out to fend for themselves. Poor quality feed equals poor animal health as well as higher methane production. Also, even when western firms are willing to share technology or when western products are available, these are often unaffordable for the majority in India. For instance, Monensin, an antibiotic whose slow-release formula reduces methane emission by cows, proved too expensive for widespread use in India. So the emphasis for Indian scientists is on indigenous solutions. "We know we cannot count on high quality feed and fodder," says Singhal, "No one will be able to afford it. What we have done instead is develop cheaper technologies and products." One example is urea-molasses-mineral blocks that are cheap, reduce methane emission by 20%, and also provide more nutrition so they're easier to sell to illiterate farmers who don't know a thing about global warming but want higher milk yields. Most dietary interventions work by checking methogens — microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments such as cows' guts, where they convert the available hydrogen and carbon (byproducts of digestion) into methane, a colorless, odorless gas. "We encourage well-to-do farmers to use oilseed cakes which provide unsaturated fatty acids that get rid of the hydrogen," Dr. Singhal says. Another solution is herbal additives. Some commonly used Indian herbs such as shikakai and reetha, which go into making soap, and many kinds of oilseeds contain saponins and tannins, substances that make for lathery, bitter meals but block hydrogen availability for methogens. Dr Singhal says they are used in small quantities and the cows don't seem to mind the taste. "Imagine how much potential they'd have in the international market," he says. (See pictures of India's biodegradable dishware.) Several other institutions, such as the National Institute of Animal Nutrition and Physiology (NIANP) in Bangalore, are also researching herbs. "We're studying the effect of tannin compounds from various easily-available sources like tealeaves. We're also studying prebiotic and probiotic feed supplements," says Dr K.T. Sampath, director, NIANP. Other institutes, such as the New Delhi-based The Energy Research Institute (TERI), are working on methane capture strategies. One long-running project has been biogas production — cow dung is utilized to make biogas for use in kitchens and even compressed biogas for use in vehicles. "Biogas plants have been very successful," says R.K. Rajeshwari, a fellow at TERI, "Farmers are able to use biogas in their kitchens, to light lamps and to even drive vehicles." Such projects, she says, have been particularly successful at gaushalas, cow shelters supported by donations from the devout and by government grants, of which there are 4,000 across India now. Most gaushalas are for abandoned, dry and aged cattle, of which there are many since killing cows is illegal in all but two states (the communist-ruled West Bengal and Kerala). "This way they are put to some use at least," says Rajeshwari, "And by replacing conventional sources of energy, they help prevent global warming." ----------------- 5. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890646,00.html
1. Selina Li Qiaowei 2. An uneven playing field 3. I believe this is a serious issue, if we are attending unfair negotiation between countries, we can never have a fair answer to all those questions. I did not aware of this problem before I read this article, in my mind, I always believe deeply in environmental negotiation between countries and regions, as far as I am aware, that is the most useful way for countries to search for agreement on significant environmental issue. Now I am noticing that even the rule of the game is unfair no wonder there are always people asking why all those agreement seem more attractive to the first world country but not the third world countries. I found the answer however not much can be say or done on this problem. This problem is not a single issue but relate to many aspects of a country. Without stable economic and education system, it is hard for developing countries to provide elites to compete with powerful state like the United State during any international conferences to solve the urgent need for help on behalf of the developing countries. Still, I want to ask the question that even the developing countries can provide no good player on the table, but it is a fact and many evidences show that the impact of major environmental changes such as sea-level rise is caused by over industrialization development for developed countries, why all these problems can not be solved too? We can see the truth by eye even it is not on the paper. In the article it says ‘certain level of climate change is already “hard wired” into the system, meaning that some impacts will be inevitable even if all greenhouse-gas emissions were halted today. So we need to adapt.’ What a sad news for all. Is this the result that all of us want to hear after we have tried to put in so much effort. Isn’t it quite funny and stupid to say that we are trying to solve problem that is already has no solution. I also read one piece of news yesterday and it states that by 2013, the ice-pole in Antarctica will melt throughout the whole area. I shocked, as every time I read the same topic of news, the time is getting closer. Do we really can adapt the environment when it becomes unchangeable one day, I believe the answer is No. No matter how medicine may develop rapidly in the future, there is no medicine to cure for careless to the environment. There is also no medicine can cure Regret. Those small islands could say goodbye to the Earth before their voice could be heard in conferences. Such a pity when it comes to an end. 4.--------------------------------------------- 5. With less than nine months to meet the December 2009 deadline for a new global framework to tackle climate change, this week’s gathering in Bonn, Germany, of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be a critical negotiating session.
And while all right-thinking people agree that a new deal must be fair and equitable, the negotiations themselves are anything but. The talks risk focusing too much on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, without paying adequate attention to the urgent need for vulnerable nations to adapt to inevitable climate-change impacts. If the rich world does not address these disparities, the negotiations could result in a broken deal that adds to the burden of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
The current rules under the Kyoto Protocol commit a number of industrialised countries — but not the United States, which has not ratified the protocol — to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by set amounts by 2012, when the targets expire. Countries urgently need to agree replacement rules by the end of December, or there will not be enough time to enact them by 2012. The last thing a climate-constrained world needs is a period without any nation having binding commitments to reduce their emissions.
High on the agenda at Bonn will be new targets for both the developed countries and what might be the first binding targets for rapidly developing large countries, such as China and Brazil. But a certain level of climate change is already “hard wired” into the system, meaning that some impacts will be inevitable even if all greenhouse-gas emissions were halted today. So we need to adapt.
In fact, impacts are already being felt in the form of harsher and less predictable weather, melting ice caps, coral bleaching and rising sea levels. While we will all be forced to adapt to the impacts of climate change, it is often those least responsible for them — the least developed nations and small island states — that are the most vulnerable. But the international negotiations, which revolve around the competing power agendas of nations, are unfair to those vulnerable states.
Size matters — the big players are the rich, powerful states — but is not the only factor that comes into play in the conference room. Technical and legal expertise, as well as knowing how to play the negotiating game, can have a decisive role in determining outcomes. This means that most developing countries are on the back foot from the outset. They lack the resources and personnel they need to stand toe-to-toe with the big players.
At the last big climate conference in Poznan, Poland, the US delegation numbered over 80 representatives, while the small Pacific island state Kiribati, where climate change is a survival issue today, had only three and Congo had just two.
This matters because the negotiations usually break up quickly into many small groups to thrash out difficult issues. Delegates from the least developed countries and small island states must rush between groups, often late at night, getting very little sleep compared with larger delegations. And so they lose out. Such nations also have minimal capacity or time for crucial preparation, but it can take months of analysis to understand complex issues and their implications.
Meanwhile, the delegations from wealthy industrialised nations meet in advance to prepare their negotiating positions — and fallback strategies — bolstered by technical, scientific and legal advisers. Although some of the small island states have managed to punch far above their weight by having some exceptionally good negotiators, most of the vulnerable countries cannot claim that advantage.
A climate-change conference may need climate policy specialists, highly qualified scientists, legal advisers and experts in several other fields, such as forestry and agriculture, but most countries simply do not have the skilled staff or the resources needed. This can result in developing countries missing opportunities to influence decisions that could help alleviate poverty, such as the design of incentives for rainforest nations to avoid deforestation and forest degradation, which account for about 17% of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
Equally, the deal that governments will be negotiating must include a robust and effective long-term plan for helping vulnerable nations to adapt to climate change. But there is a risk that the focus will instead be on mitigation because emissions, and any attempts to impose binding targets to reduce them, are the major concerns of the larger, more powerful states.
Despite their size and limited capacity to negotiate against much larger delegations, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has succeeded in making its voice heard and has been a leader in promoting the moral dimensions of climate change. Likewise, the formation of a Least Developed Countries group that works together with a common negotiating stance has bolstered the weak starting point of these countries.
But the disparities in negotiating power remain. And while UN treaties have dedicated funds to support the participation of developing countries in the negotiations, these are voluntary and underfunded. The Least Developed Countries and the Alliance of Small Island States will need support from other nations to ensure that the deal strikes a fair balance between mitigation and adaptation concerns.
Some would say that the current situation is fair and that it is only to be expected that large rich nations have more say. Others would argue that to reach global solutions, which work for all states, international negotiations need to be based on a truly common agenda. Whatever the viewpoint, the playing field is not a level one.
Joy Hyvarinen is director of the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development Mike Shanahan is press officer at the International Institute for Environment and Development
Homepage image from Piotr Fajfer / Oxfam International 6.-------- 7.http://www.chinadialogue.cn/article/show/single/en/2878?page=1
2. Using Fungi to Replace Styrofoam / Fluoride in Korean Water
3. I am writing about two articles. The first one deals with the discovery of using mushrooms to replace styrofoam, which we all know is very harmful material to the environment. The second is some information on something that I found interesting from the last class, which was fluoride in Korean water.
A student from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, also the founder of Ecovative Design, discovered that "that perlite, a type of volcanic glass frequently used as a component of insulation, was also used in growing mushrooms." Thus this fungi, mixed with other cells and then dehydrated, creates a study stryofoam alternative. Styrofoam is one of the most harmful products that companies still widely use. It does not biodegrade, and the process of recycling it is arduous and expensive. It also contains chlorofluorocarbons, which is devastating to the stratosphere.
The fungus stryofoam will be cheaper to produce and manufacture in the end. Hopefully this will catch on and companies will start using this product instead of styrofoam.
The second "Fluoridation of drinking water is known to decrease dental caries, particularly in children. However, the effects of fluoridated water on bone over several decades are still in controversy." "The result of this study suggests that the high fluoride in groundwater originates from geological sources and fluoride can be removed by fluorite precipitation when high Ca concentration is maintained. This provides a basis for a proper management plan to develop the deep thermal groundwater and for treatment of high fluoride groundwater frequently found in South Korea."
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As a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Eben Bayer, a co-founder of the company Ecovative Design and a Vermont native with some experience harvesting mushrooms, realized that perlite, a type of volcanic glass frequently used as a component of insulation, was also used in growing mushrooms.
He thought it might be possible to make insulation out of fungi using perlite – and in a class before he graduated in 2007, he proved right.
Now, the company he founded with classmate Gavin McIntyre — Ecovative Design — is angling to provide not just a mass-market, organic insulation material, but also a replacement for Styrofoam, the non-biodegradable, carbon-intense material used widely in packing and shipping.
Both are both produced through microbinding, in which local agricultural waste — including buckwheat, rice and cottonseed hulls and other materials high in lignin, a complex organic polymer found in many plants — is mixed with cells from a specific type of fungi.
Within about a week, Mr. Bayer said, the fungus digests the lignin, producing a strong biological matrix. The mixture is poured into a mold and then dehydrated, creating the finished product.
“So essentially, we use the energy locked up in the ag waste to put together a new product,” says Bayer.
Jeff Stone, the editor-in-chief of Mycologia, a journal devoted to all things fungus, says, “Fungi require a source of carbon and energy like we do. In this case, what they are consuming is cellulose from plant walls, and rice hulls are predominantly cellulose.”
Because Ecovative uses locally sourced raw materials and grows its products in the dark at room temperature, the company says they are less energy-intensive and cheaper to manufacture than Styrofoam.
Just how the whole process might scale up, however, remains to be seen. So far, the company has only installed a few demonstration walls using Greensulate, its insulation material. And the company is releasing limited quantities of “Acorn,” its packing material, as custom-made packaging for certain Northeast manufacturers in 2009.
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
1. Dakyung Lee
ReplyDelete2. Energy and Bottled Waters
3. The article described the process for producing bottled water. This made me realize that it was not just the excessive usage of plastic that was creating a problem but also the energy that is used up in the actual production process of bottled water. For example, the energy that is used to produce the bottles from plastic, to treat the water, to fill and cap the bottles and to transport them.
The fact that bottled water sales surpassed 200 billion liters around the globe and that there was a 70% rise in the bottled water sales in the U.S made me imagine how much oil had to be used. It made me think about all the energy that is needed to produce the bottled waters and the financial cost and environmental impact behind the production process.
One of the most important points the writer mentioned was regarding individual choices. For college students, like myself, bottled water seems to be something that we purchase on a regular basis. Even when I visit convenient stores, I see a huge selection of different bottled waters and teas. While they may be convenient, I realized that we need to all make individual efforts to minimize the consumption of plastic bottled waters. For example, one can purchase a nalgene bottle and fill up water in the water dispensers available around campus and dorms. Another solution would be to reuse old bottles instead of throwing the bottles after using it only once.
Overall, this article showed how understanding the energy cost behind the production process is crucial. With little effort and time, I believe that we can all contribute in reducing the overusage of energy and conserve the environment.
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Our bottled water habit has a huge environmental impact, including the amount of energy it takes to make the plastic bottles, fill them and ship them to thirsty consumers worldwide.
A new study breaks down just how much energy is used at each step of the process.
An estimated total of the equivalent of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil was required to generate the energy to produce the amount of bottled water consumed in the United States in 2007, according to the study, detailed in the January-March issue of the journal Environmental Research Letters. Of course, this is but a third of a percent of the energy that the United States consumes as a whole in a year.
In 2007, the last year for which global statistics were available, more than 200 billion liters of bottled water were sold around the world, mostly in North America and Europe. The total amount sold in the United States alone that year (33 billion liters) averages out to about 110 liters (almost 30 gallons) of water per person, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
Since 2001, bottled water sales have increased by 70 percent in the United States, far surpassing those of milk and beer. Only sodas have larger sales.
The energy required to produce bottled water is particularly of interest now, at a time when many nations are looking for ways to reduce their energy use and associated climate impacts.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan research institute, and his colleague Heather Cooley recently realized that no one had done a comprehensive survey of the energy use involved in the complete production cycle of bottled water, so they took on the task.
Plastic and transportation
The energy use breaks down into roughly four parts of the production cycle: that used to make the plastic and turn it into bottles, to treat the water, to fill and cap the bottles, and finally to transport them.
"Energy is used in a lot of different phases," Gleick said.
Most plastic bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Little pellets of PET are melted and fused together to make the bottle mold. Gleick and Cooley estimated that about 1 million tons of PET were used to make plastic bottles in the United States in 2007, with 3 million tons used globally; the energy used to produce that global amount of PET and the bottles it was turned into was equivalent to about 50 billion barrels of oil, they found.
(Some companies have been shifting toward using lighter-weight plastics for their bottles, which reduces the amount of PET produced by about 30 percent and would therefore lower the amount of energy required to make them. The transition to less energy-intensive plastic is slow though, and not all companies use them.)
The amount of energy involved in that first step was a surprise to Gleick: "I didn’t know how much energy it takes to make plastic or turn plastic into a bottle," he told LiveScience.
The energy required to treat water is substantially less and depends on how many treatments are used on the water and doesn't account for the bulk of the energy spent in production. Likewise, the energy used to clean, fill, seal and label the bottles is only about 0.34 percent of the energy built into the bottle itself.
The energy used to transport the bottled water depends mainly on how far it is shipped and what transportation method is used. Air cargo is the costliest energy method, followed by truck, cargo ship and rail shipping, in that order. A different study on the carbon footprint of wine also found this breakdown of energy use for transportation methods.
In their study, Gleick and Cooley used the examples of different types of water shipped to Los Angeles: water produced locally and shipped by truck involved the least amount of energy, followed by water sent by cargo ship from Fiji, with water produced in France and shipped by cargo ship and rail having the highest energy costs.
Individual choices
The final tally of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil may be only about a third of a percent of the total U.S. energy consumption, but it could be considered an "unnecessary use of energy," Gleick said. (Roughly three times as much oil would have been needed to produce the global amount of bottled water consumed.)
The amount is 2,000 times more than is required to make tap water, "and we live in a country where we have very good tap water," Gleick said.
Gleick said that the purpose of the study was not to propose that bottled water be banned, but to help consumers "understand the implications of our choices." With the information on the energy impacts, "we may choose to do different things as individuals," he added.
Understanding the energy costs of the process also sheds light on the greenhouse gases that energy use emits. "Energy is sort of the first piece of the puzzle," Gleick said.
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http://www.livescience.com/environment/090318-bottled-water-energy.html
1. Soo-Bin ,Lee
ReplyDelete2. Honeybee bonanza at GloryBee in Eugene
3. I remember somebody said that when bees are extinct, human beings can't also live. Since, as the article says, bees play a vital role in making sure we have the food we need. It is just one of a living creature. However every single forms of live have their own function in this world. I think this is very important and also what the human has neglected. To be more enviornmental friendly or extremely said to survive, in my opinion, people should get out of humancentric thoughts. Personally I think it is very dangerous one. I don't mean that people should not respect themselves or others. Just please consider a little bit that other creatures are also there, that they also breathe like us.
(I am not sure, but I think) This kind of topic can also lead to 'animal rights'. Actually I am against the experiment animal. People don't have the right, is my opinion. And I don't think these ecperiments don't lead to the right to pursue one's happiness. It is true that the technique will improve but when a disease can be cured. Another kind of illness will come out. I think it's a vicious circle.
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Honeybee bonanza at GloryBee in Eugene
By Arrianee LeBeau KVAL News Video EUGENE, Ore - For several years beekeepers have been reporting a drop in adult honey bees called Colony Collapse Disorder. But some people at GloryBee Foods Factory are working to make sure bees survive the test of time.
The numbers reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture since 2006 said beekeepers are seeing a 30 to 90 percent drop in the number of honeybees.
At the kickoff of Bee Weekend, droves of people scrabbled inside the GloryBee Foods factory store. People hurried to pick up supplies to start building their own beehives.
"I am picking up my colony of bees. It's a queen with I guess 6,000 bees," Carol Richmond said.
Richmond took a beekeeping class at Lane Community College. She said she wants to harvest her own honey and help keep honeybees from dying off. So today she picked up her own bees and their queen to start making her hive.
Dick Turanski is the founder of GloryBee Foods and demonstrated how to care for bees. He said properly showing people how to care for bees can help prevent large numbers of them from dying. He said bees play a vital role in making sure we have the food we need.
"Bees are most importantly the environmental barometer of how things are doing in nature. Bees are important for the agricultural production of crops," Turanski said.
While most of those at Bee Weekend were trained keepers, Turanski says educating people about the importance of bees can help keep them alive.
According to the the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there is no one main cause for Colony Collapse Disorder.
Research is still being done to figure out why the large number of adult honey bees is declining.
GloryBee Foods Bee Weekend will run through Saturday April 11th from 8:30AM until 2PM.
You can learn about honey bees and taste some fresh honey for free.
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http://www.kval.com/news/local/42838847.html
1. Sohyun Park
ReplyDelete2. Easter Eggs = Less Energy Use?
3. I chose this article since today is Easter Sunday. This is a short article talking about how April and May are the months that people use least amount of energy. The reason is because daylight hours grow longer and the weather becomes moderate. We tend to use less lighting and heating. However, it means that summer is coming and we will need to use a lot of energy for air-conditioning.
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On the evening of March 28, people around the globe turned off their lights in observation of “Earth Hour” — an event aimed at drawing attention to energy conservation.
But it’s actually a bit later in the year — usually April or May — when Americans, with little fanfare, use the least amount of energy. Indeed, in terms of daytime usage between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., the day of the year with the lowest electricity consumption has fallen in April or May every year since 2000, according to New England’s grid operator.
The single lowest energy-use day has coincided with Easter Sunday on three of those years.
“Temperatures moderate and the daylight hours grow longer in the months of April and May,” said Erin O’Brien, a spokeswoman for I.S.O.-New England, the grid operator, in an e-mail message. “This combination prompts customers and business to use less electricity for heating, cooling and lighting.”
Because of the lull in demand, many power plants often shut down for maintenance, ahead of the hot, air-conditioned summer.
Said Paul Rosengren, a spokesman for P.S.E.G., an energy company based in New Jersey: “Spring is a time when you try to get a lot of your summer prep done.”
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http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/easter-eggs-less-energy-use/
1. Kyuhee Shim
ReplyDelete2. Bioengineering
3. It seems not long ago climate change was still a controversy. Against the majority of the scientific community who tried to alert the international community of the fate of our planet, I remember how the Bush administration instead tried to dub global warming as a myth. But now the crisis has become undeniable, and we can’t waste any more time.
The Obama administration has raised hopes that the environment would be placed at the top of the agenda for his term in office. I’m not sure how much President Obama is bent on solving our environmental problems, but this article tells me that at least Omaba’s scientific advisor is well aware of how urgent these issues have become.
But I have doubts about this idea for geo-engineering. It seems to be considered by the administration as a last resort in case we are unable to find a remedy for the melting ice caps. I feel pretty divided about this policy. On one hand I am relieved to see that finally the US government has realized how serious our environmental problems have become, and it is true that we must begin to consider our options in case of a worst case scenario.
On the other hand I think the administration should first make an effort to solve our environmental problems before searching for desperate measure that may actually worsen the problem. For example, cloud seeding may put a cap on the rising temperatures of the earth, but it will have the reverse effect of increasing the levels of CO2 which is the reason temperatures are rising in the first place. Bio-engineering fails to attack the root causes of our predicament. I think the entire idea is a cowardly cop out by the Obama administration.
Why don’t we instead shift our focus on ways to completely rid of the polluting industry structures once and for all, and look for alternative sustainable ways to manufacture our products, generate our energy, and drive our cars? I have heard of many possible solutions to these problems but many are being shot down before given a fair chance. Biochar, a topic I posted about last week, was just opposed in an international declaration this week. I feel that biochar, and many technologies being developed, shouldn’t be abandoned because of a few flaws.
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4. Obama climate adviser open to geo-engineering to tackle global warming
Mooted geo-engineering fixes for climate change include placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth. Photograph: Blue Line Pictures/Getty Images
The global warming situation has become so dire that Barack Obama's chief scientific adviser has raised with the president the possibility of massive-scale technological fixes to alter the climate known as 'geo-engineering'.
John Holdren, who is a member of the president's cabinet, said today the drastic measures should not be "off the table" in discussions on how best to tackle climate change. While his office insisted that he was not proposing a dramatic switch in policy, Holdren said geo-engineering could not be ruled out.
"It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table," Holdren said in an interview with Associated Press. He made clear these were his personal views.
The suite of mega-technological fixes includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth, to fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Another option is to seed clouds which bounce the sun's rays back into space so they do not warm the Earth's surface.
Such global-scale technological solutions to climate change may seem fantastical, but increasing numbers of scientists argue that the technologies should at least be investigated.
Holdren's comments do not mean that the US government is raising the priority of geo-engineering. A spokesman for the US Government's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) - which Holdren directs - said "the administration's primary focus is still to seek comprehensive energy legislation that can get us closer to a clean energy economy, and can create green jobs while reducing dependence on foreign oil."
Advocates of the technology have welcomed the comments. Stephen Salter, an engineer at Edinburgh University and a pioneer of techniques to seed clouds so that they reflect the Sun's rays back into space, said: "Everyone working in geo-engineering works with some reluctance: we hope it'll never be needed, but we fear it might be needed very very urgently. Holden is echoing that exactly. It's very encouraging – we've had extremely negative reactions from the UK governments."
Salter said that geo-engineering techniques were the only methods that would lower world temperatures quickly enough. Even if the world stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, he said, the world would continue to get hotter for several decades. "Opponents say it would take the pressure off getting the renewables developed. I've been working on renewables since 1973 and stopped because we're too late, we wasted too much time. We may have a panic very soon because of the way the Arctic ice is going."
Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr, however, has said: "The wider point is not the pros and cons of particular technologies, but that the scientific community is becoming so scared of our collective inability to tackle climate emissions that such outlandish schemes are being considered for serious study. We already have the technology and know-how to make dramatic cuts in global emissions - but it's not happening, and those closest to the climate science are coming near to pressing the panic button."
Holdren acknowledged that some of the potential geo-engineering solutions could have side effects, and that such actions should not be taken lightly.
Though cloud-seeding, for example, would cool the earth, it would also lead to more acidic oceans, since the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - and therefore the CO2 absorbed into the seas - would keep increasing. But Holdren added: "We might get desperate enough to want to use it."
His comments seemed to go against those he made in a speech to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. There, he highlighted geo-engineering's potential to help cool the atmosphere or to remove greenhouse gases, but acknowledged the methods would likely require significant investment, and also warned against expecting a single technological solution to solve energy and climate problems. "Belief in technological miracles is generally a mistake," he said.
Writing last year in a special edition of the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions that was dedicated to geo-engineering, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge said: "While such geo-scale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing. There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."
In a series of papers, experts said that a reluctance "at virtually all levels" to address rising greenhouse gas emissions meant carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were on track to pass 650 parts per million, which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They called for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the earth.
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5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/08/geo-engineering-john-holdren
1. Yoon HyeSung
ReplyDelete2. Plastic 'diet' found in leatherback turtles
Necropsy reports show a third of specimens had it in their digestive system
3. I haven't heard about 'leatherback turtles' before. I like turtles, but I didn't know that a leatherback turtle is a kind of turtles.
Surely, there are many environmental problems due to plastics. Before I read this article, I've already seen a video about a problem like this. In the video, I saw birds dying because of plastics. When floating plastics are gathered, it looks like an island. So, the birds think that it is an island, and they eat plastics on it. It was so terrible. And now I really feel that plastics we've thrown away are having negative effects on the environment. They kill animals.
This situation is getting worse and worse. I think that there aren't much effort to solve this problem. How can we help those animals? What is the fundamental cause of this? Perhaps people's desire made the environment ill. It's time to recover the environment.
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Leatherback turtles are ancient creatures with a modern problem: Plastic.
A new study looked at necropsy reports of more than 400 leatherbacks that have died since 1885 and found plastic in the digestive systems of more than a third of the animals. Besides plastic bags, the turtles had swallowed fishing lines, balloon fragments, spoons, candy wrappers and more.
Plastic was probably not the cause of death in most cases. Nevertheless, the study is an important wake-up call for a growing garbage problem.
"Eating something that is plastic can't be good for you, whether it leads to death or not," said Mike James, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "It's not what they should be eating. And it's kind of scary that it is showing up in their diet to the extent that it is."
Leatherback turtles are critically endangered and highly charismatic creatures. They are big, weighing 1,000 pounds or more, with shells that can measure more than 6 feet across. These peaceful creatures have had the same basic body plan for 150 million years.
Leatherbacks are also popular for what they eat: namely, large quantities of jellyfish. The problem is that plastic bags look a lot like jellyfish, and plastic often ends up in the oceans, piling up in areas where currents -- and turtles -- converge. That led James to wonder how much often the turtles were swallowing plastic in their hunt for yummy jellyfish.
Collecting the data was a painstaking process. James and colleagues spent two years searching far and wide for turtle necropsy reports. They scanned the literature, and they asked people to dig up old field-notebooks. For every report found, they had to make sure that a complete necropsy had been performed and that the entire GI tract had been opened.
The researchers ended up with a sample size of 408 turtles, stranded at some point during the last 125 years. Of those, 138 -- or 34 percent -- contained plastic. Alongside the rise in plastic production, there has been a sharp rise in plastic-containing turtles since the 1950s.
That finding isn't surprising, given the leatherback's jellyfish-based diet, said Christopher Sasso, a research fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Miami.
But the numbers are alarming. Plastic can block a turtle's gut, causing bloating, interfering with digestion, and leading to a slow, painful death. "I can't imagine it's very comfortable," he said. "Their guts weren't designed to digest plastic."
There are vast fields of trash floating in the world's oceans, Sasso added. And leatherback turtles travel thousands of miles each year, giving them even more opportunities to come in contact with it.
"This is an animal that has survived many extinction events," James said, "And now it's got all these anthropogenic hazards to face."
That's where people come in. Simple choices -- like putting balloons and picnic supplies in the trash and using canvas instead of plastic grocery bags -- can help leatherbacks and other marine creatures survive long into the future.
"Of all the problems the environment faces, this one is not impossible to address," James said. "We don't need to have everything packaged in plastic. There are alternatives."
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© 2009 Discovery Channel
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30144026/
1. Mikah Lee
ReplyDelete2. The Rich- the Answer?
3. I've always seen the wealthy as obstacles that continue to keep us from actively reducing the destruction of our environment. Those millionaires and their CO2-emitting factories and their private jets and their rainforest-destroying business plans and their oil companies and their safes full of money! Really, I've only ever viewed the 'rich' as snobby people who live for luxury, leave behind a significantly larger carbon-footprint, and don't give a darn about the environment. But lo and behold, the rich are actually trying to help! Well, some of them, at least.
Here we have some wealthy people using their money for the welfare of the planet. Who would have thought that someone, one single person, had bought a whole stretch of rain forest area for the sole reason of preserving it? Sure, we hear of wildlife preservation parks, but those are usually funded by certain groups or governments.
I like the word created to describe these rich people who really do care for the environment: eco-barons (sounds pretty spiffy if you ask me). Of course, this doesn't mean that we, the significantly NOT-RICH, should just relax on our little sofas and leave everything up to the 'big guys'- no, I believe we should continue to try and do whatever we can to 'save' our planet. It's just nice to hear that some of the people we had thought of as powerful but irresponsible are actually taking some effective steps towards a greener future.
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Friday, Mar. 13, 2009
When the Super-Rich Go Green, They Do It Big
By Bryan Walsh
The very rich are different from you and me. For one thing, their carbon footprints are bigger. Between their private jets, fleets of cars and large (often multiple) houses, the wealthy tend to suck up more than their fair share of the earth's resources. And that's not even counting the environmental impact of the businesses that built their bank accounts.
But as Edward Humes makes clear in his new book Eco-Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet, a high income-tax bracket gives the rich another advantage: a platform on which they can advance the causes that matter to them. And believe it or not, a surprising number of super-wealthy Americans are using their money to fight for what Humes calls "a secret plan to save the earth." (See the top 10 green stories of 2008.)
These are Humes' "eco-barons" — the modern-day counterpart to the 19th century robber barons who helped set the U.S. on its resource-gobbling path — and they're using their vast wealth and will to help protect the earth's quickly vanishing wilderness. The eco-barons' mission, Humes says, became all the more important when Washington shrank from its role as environmental guardian. "In an era in which government has been either broke, indifferent or actively hostile to environmental causes," writes Humes, "a band of visionaries ... are using their wealth, their energy, their celebrity and their knowledge of law and science to persuade, and sometimes force, the United States and the world to take a new direction." (Listen to Humes on this week's Greencast.)
In his book, Humes profiles an assortment of eco-barons, from businessmen to inventors, and discovers that what binds them is, he says, a "clear view of the insanity attached to the way we live." Doug Tompkins, who founded the clothing line Esprit — and then left it behind for conservation in the 1990s while it was still wildly successful — is the quintessential eco-baron and the source of Hume's best writing. Tompkins was always an outdoor adventurer — even while heading up Esprit, he would regularly disappear for months-long trips to the forests of South America — so when he burned out in the corporate world, Tompkins took his fortune, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and began steadily buying acre after acre of threatened virgin forest in Chile. But he met with considerable resistance from the Chilean government and media: the idea of a rich gringo going down to South America to protect nature, not exploit it, seemed so absurd to post-Pinochet Chileans that they suspected Tompkins was up to something.
He was, but it wasn't what the Chileans thought. Tompkins and his wife Kristine DeWitt, the former CEO of the ultragreen clothing company Patagonia, were planning to create a nature sanctuary in the middle of Chilean rain forest. Slowly, gradually, as Humes aptly chronicles, they convinced the government that they wanted nothing more than to protect one of the most beautiful and heretofore untouched stretches of forest in the world — what the Chilean poet Mario Miranda Soussi once called the "Patagonia of infinite land and water." Today Tompkins and his wife own 2 million acres in Chile and Argentina centered on the private nature sanctuary of Pumalin Park, which Tompkins plans to turn over to the Chilean people eventually. "He's preserved more rain forest than anyone else on Earth," says Humes.
Eco-Barons profiles other do-gooders, including Andy Frank, who created the plug-in hybrid car, but those stories are less compelling than Humes' description of Tompkins. The book starts to feel repetitive as we're introduced to one extraordinary green after another. But Humes' ultimate point is well taken: at the very moment when the government began abdicating its responsibilities to the environment, the eco-barons stepped in. "We'd be years behind where we are now without these individuals," says Humes. (Read about Chevy's electric car.)
We may no longer need them to lead the way, now that the Obama Administration has promised the country that its environmental agencies are back on the job. And in a recession, there will be few barons, eco- or otherwise, left standing. But even with a friend in the White House, the environmental movement still faces hurdles, from oil companies to civic passivity, so there will always be a role for those with the will — and sometimes the wealth — to make a difference.
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http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1884297,00.html
1. Claire Cambier
ReplyDelete2. Cows With Gas: India's Global Warming Problem
3. This article interested be because although I knew cows' gas had a lot of methane, I never thought the problem was to this extent. People are actually making a lot of efforts to try reducing the quantity of methane released by indian cows, which are not only numerous but also not well fed. As the article shows, culture can have a great importance on the way people of one country influence the environment. And in trying to devise ways of solving the problem, one also has to consider culture, because one method can be easily to apply to one culture but not as useful to another one.
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4.Cows With Gas: India's Global Warming Problem
By Madhur Singh / New Delhi Saturday, Apr. 11, 2009
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Indolent cows languidly chewing their cud while befuddled motorists honk and maneuver their vehicles around them are images as stereotypically Indian as saffron-clad holy men and the Taj Mahal. Now, however, India's ubiquitous cows — of which there are 283 million, more than anywhere else in the world — have assumed a more menacing role as they become part of the climate change debate.
By burping, belching and excreting copious amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide — India's livestock of roughly 485 million (including sheep and goats) contribute more to global warming than the vehicles they obstruct. With new research suggesting that emission of methane by Indian livestock is higher than previously estimated, scientists are furiously working at designing diets to help bovines and other ruminants eat better, stay more energetic and secrete lesser amounts of the offensive gas. (See pictures of India's largest ruminant: the Asian elephant.)
Last month, scientists at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad in western India published a pan-India livestock methane emission inventory, the first ever, which put the figure at 11.75 million metric tons per year, higher than 9 million metric tons estimated in 1994. This amount is likely to increase as higher incomes and consumption rates put more pressure on the country's dairy industry to become even more productive. (See pictures of China's cow town.)
Already the world's largest producer of milk, India will have to yank up production from the current 100 million metric tons to 180 million metric tons by 2021-22 to keep pace with growing population and expanding disposable incomes. Livestock such as cows, buffalo, goats, sheep, horses and mules are indispensable to India's rural economy — whether yoked to plow land, raised for milk and manure, or harnessed to pull carts to move goods and people. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that the animals contribute 5.3% to total GDP, up from 4.8% during 1980-81. But, says Dr. K.K. Singhal, head of Dairy Cattle Nutrition at the National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal in northern India, "while livestock plays a crucial role in the economy, global warming is becoming a huge worry. We're trying to find indigenous solutions, because our realities are very different from the West." (See the 10 things you should know about the world's cheapest car: India's Nano.)
For starters, most Indian livestock is underfed and undernourished, unlike robust counterparts in richer countries. The typical Indian farmer is unable to buy expensive dietary supplements even for livestock of productive age, and dry milch cattle and older farm animals are invariably turned out to fend for themselves. Poor quality feed equals poor animal health as well as higher methane production. Also, even when western firms are willing to share technology or when western products are available, these are often unaffordable for the majority in India. For instance, Monensin, an antibiotic whose slow-release formula reduces methane emission by cows, proved too expensive for widespread use in India. So the emphasis for Indian scientists is on indigenous solutions. "We know we cannot count on high quality feed and fodder," says Singhal, "No one will be able to afford it. What we have done instead is develop cheaper technologies and products." One example is urea-molasses-mineral blocks that are cheap, reduce methane emission by 20%, and also provide more nutrition so they're easier to sell to illiterate farmers who don't know a thing about global warming but want higher milk yields.
Most dietary interventions work by checking methogens — microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments such as cows' guts, where they convert the available hydrogen and carbon (byproducts of digestion) into methane, a colorless, odorless gas. "We encourage well-to-do farmers to use oilseed cakes which provide unsaturated fatty acids that get rid of the hydrogen," Dr. Singhal says. Another solution is herbal additives. Some commonly used Indian herbs such as shikakai and reetha, which go into making soap, and many kinds of oilseeds contain saponins and tannins, substances that make for lathery, bitter meals but block hydrogen availability for methogens. Dr Singhal says they are used in small quantities and the cows don't seem to mind the taste. "Imagine how much potential they'd have in the international market," he says. (See pictures of India's biodegradable dishware.)
Several other institutions, such as the National Institute of Animal Nutrition and Physiology (NIANP) in Bangalore, are also researching herbs. "We're studying the effect of tannin compounds from various easily-available sources like tealeaves. We're also studying prebiotic and probiotic feed supplements," says Dr K.T. Sampath, director, NIANP. Other institutes, such as the New Delhi-based The Energy Research Institute (TERI), are working on methane capture strategies. One long-running project has been biogas production — cow dung is utilized to make biogas for use in kitchens and even compressed biogas for use in vehicles. "Biogas plants have been very successful," says R.K. Rajeshwari, a fellow at TERI, "Farmers are able to use biogas in their kitchens, to light lamps and to even drive vehicles." Such projects, she says, have been particularly successful at gaushalas, cow shelters supported by donations from the devout and by government grants, of which there are 4,000 across India now. Most gaushalas are for abandoned, dry and aged cattle, of which there are many since killing cows is illegal in all but two states (the communist-ruled West Bengal and Kerala). "This way they are put to some use at least," says Rajeshwari, "And by replacing conventional sources of energy, they help prevent global warming."
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5. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890646,00.html
1. Selina Li Qiaowei
ReplyDelete2. An uneven playing field
3. I believe this is a serious issue, if we are attending unfair negotiation between countries, we can never have a fair answer to all those questions. I did not aware of this problem before I read this article, in my mind, I always believe deeply in environmental negotiation between countries and regions, as far as I am aware, that is the most useful way for countries to search for agreement on significant environmental issue. Now I am noticing that even the rule of the game is unfair no wonder there are always people asking why all those agreement seem more attractive to the first world country but not the third world countries. I found the answer however not much can be say or done on this problem. This problem is not a single issue but relate to many aspects of a country. Without stable economic and education system, it is hard for developing countries to provide elites to compete with powerful state like the United State during any international conferences to solve the urgent need for help on behalf of the developing countries. Still, I want to ask the question that even the developing countries can provide no good player on the table, but it is a fact and many evidences show that the impact of major environmental changes such as sea-level rise is caused by over industrialization development for developed countries, why all these problems can not be solved too? We can see the truth by eye even it is not on the paper.
In the article it says ‘certain level of climate change is already “hard wired” into the system, meaning that some impacts will be inevitable even if all greenhouse-gas emissions were halted today. So we need to adapt.’ What a sad news for all. Is this the result that all of us want to hear after we have tried to put in so much effort. Isn’t it quite funny and stupid to say that we are trying to solve problem that is already has no solution. I also read one piece of news yesterday and it states that by 2013, the ice-pole in Antarctica will melt throughout the whole area. I shocked, as every time I read the same topic of news, the time is getting closer. Do we really can adapt the environment when it becomes unchangeable one day, I believe the answer is No. No matter how medicine may develop rapidly in the future, there is no medicine to cure for careless to the environment. There is also no medicine can cure Regret. Those small islands could say goodbye to the Earth before their voice could be heard in conferences. Such a pity when it comes to an end.
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5. With less than nine months to meet the December 2009 deadline for a new global framework to tackle climate change, this week’s gathering in Bonn, Germany, of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be a critical negotiating session.
And while all right-thinking people agree that a new deal must be fair and equitable, the negotiations themselves are anything but. The talks risk focusing too much on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, without paying adequate attention to the urgent need for vulnerable nations to adapt to inevitable climate-change impacts. If the rich world does not address these disparities, the negotiations could result in a broken deal that adds to the burden of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
The current rules under the Kyoto Protocol commit a number of industrialised countries — but not the United States, which has not ratified the protocol — to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by set amounts by 2012, when the targets expire. Countries urgently need to agree replacement rules by the end of December, or there will not be enough time to enact them by 2012. The last thing a climate-constrained world needs is a period without any nation having binding commitments to reduce their emissions.
High on the agenda at Bonn will be new targets for both the developed countries and what might be the first binding targets for rapidly developing large countries, such as China and Brazil. But a certain level of climate change is already “hard wired” into the system, meaning that some impacts will be inevitable even if all greenhouse-gas emissions were halted today. So we need to adapt.
In fact, impacts are already being felt in the form of harsher and less predictable weather, melting ice caps, coral bleaching and rising sea levels. While we will all be forced to adapt to the impacts of climate change, it is often those least responsible for them — the least developed nations and small island states — that are the most vulnerable. But the international negotiations, which revolve around the competing power agendas of nations, are unfair to those vulnerable states.
Size matters — the big players are the rich, powerful states — but is not the only factor that comes into play in the conference room. Technical and legal expertise, as well as knowing how to play the negotiating game, can have a decisive role in determining outcomes. This means that most developing countries are on the back foot from the outset. They lack the resources and personnel they need to stand toe-to-toe with the big players.
At the last big climate conference in Poznan, Poland, the US delegation numbered over 80 representatives, while the small Pacific island state Kiribati, where climate change is a survival issue today, had only three and Congo had just two.
This matters because the negotiations usually break up quickly into many small groups to thrash out difficult issues. Delegates from the least developed countries and small island states must rush between groups, often late at night, getting very little sleep compared with larger delegations. And so they lose out. Such nations also have minimal capacity or time for crucial preparation, but it can take months of analysis to understand complex issues and their implications.
Meanwhile, the delegations from wealthy industrialised nations meet in advance to prepare their negotiating positions — and fallback strategies — bolstered by technical, scientific and legal advisers. Although some of the small island states have managed to punch far above their weight by having some exceptionally good negotiators, most of the vulnerable countries cannot claim that advantage.
A climate-change conference may need climate policy specialists, highly qualified scientists, legal advisers and experts in several other fields, such as forestry and agriculture, but most countries simply do not have the skilled staff or the resources needed. This can result in developing countries missing opportunities to influence decisions that could help alleviate poverty, such as the design of incentives for rainforest nations to avoid deforestation and forest degradation, which account for about 17% of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
Equally, the deal that governments will be negotiating must include a robust and effective long-term plan for helping vulnerable nations to adapt to climate change. But there is a risk that the focus will instead be on mitigation because emissions, and any attempts to impose binding targets to reduce them, are the major concerns of the larger, more powerful states.
Despite their size and limited capacity to negotiate against much larger delegations, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has succeeded in making its voice heard and has been a leader in promoting the moral dimensions of climate change. Likewise, the formation of a Least Developed Countries group that works together with a common negotiating stance has bolstered the weak starting point of these countries.
But the disparities in negotiating power remain. And while UN treaties have dedicated funds to support the participation of developing countries in the negotiations, these are voluntary and underfunded. The Least Developed Countries and the Alliance of Small Island States will need support from other nations to ensure that the deal strikes a fair balance between mitigation and adaptation concerns.
Some would say that the current situation is fair and that it is only to be expected that large rich nations have more say. Others would argue that to reach global solutions, which work for all states, international negotiations need to be based on a truly common agenda. Whatever the viewpoint, the playing field is not a level one.
Joy Hyvarinen is director of the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development
Mike Shanahan is press officer at the International Institute for Environment and Development
Homepage image from Piotr Fajfer / Oxfam International
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7.http://www.chinadialogue.cn/article/show/single/en/2878?page=1
1. Daniel Cheng
ReplyDelete2. Using Fungi to Replace Styrofoam / Fluoride in Korean Water
3. I am writing about two articles. The first one deals with the discovery of using mushrooms to replace styrofoam, which we all know is very harmful material to the environment. The second is some information on something that I found interesting from the last class, which was fluoride in Korean water.
A student from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, also the founder of Ecovative Design, discovered that "that perlite, a type of volcanic glass frequently used as a component of insulation, was also used in growing mushrooms." Thus this fungi, mixed with other cells and then dehydrated, creates a study stryofoam alternative. Styrofoam is one of the most harmful products that companies still widely use. It does not biodegrade, and the process of recycling it is arduous and expensive. It also contains chlorofluorocarbons, which is devastating to the stratosphere.
The fungus stryofoam will be cheaper to produce and manufacture in the end. Hopefully this will catch on and companies will start using this product instead of styrofoam.
The second
"Fluoridation of drinking water is known to
decrease dental caries, particularly in children. However,
the effects of fluoridated water on bone over several
decades are still in controversy."
"The result of this study suggests that the high fluoride in groundwater originates from geological sources and fluoride can be removed by fluorite precipitation when high Ca concentration is maintained. This provides a basis for a proper management plan to develop the deep thermal groundwater and for treatment of high fluoride groundwater frequently found in South Korea."
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As a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Eben Bayer, a co-founder of the company Ecovative Design and a Vermont native with some experience harvesting mushrooms, realized that perlite, a type of volcanic glass frequently used as a component of insulation, was also used in growing mushrooms.
He thought it might be possible to make insulation out of fungi using perlite – and in a class before he graduated in 2007, he proved right.
Now, the company he founded with classmate Gavin McIntyre — Ecovative Design — is angling to provide not just a mass-market, organic insulation material, but also a replacement for Styrofoam, the non-biodegradable, carbon-intense material used widely in packing and shipping.
Both are both produced through microbinding, in which local agricultural waste — including buckwheat, rice and cottonseed hulls and other materials high in lignin, a complex organic polymer found in many plants — is mixed with cells from a specific type of fungi.
Within about a week, Mr. Bayer said, the fungus digests the lignin, producing a strong biological matrix. The mixture is poured into a mold and then dehydrated, creating the finished product.
“So essentially, we use the energy locked up in the ag waste to put together a new product,” says Bayer.
Jeff Stone, the editor-in-chief of Mycologia, a journal devoted to all things fungus, says, “Fungi require a source of carbon and energy like we do. In this case, what they are consuming is cellulose from plant walls, and rice hulls are predominantly cellulose.”
Because Ecovative uses locally sourced raw materials and grows its products in the dark at room temperature, the company says they are less energy-intensive and cheaper to manufacture than Styrofoam.
Just how the whole process might scale up, however, remains to be seen. So far, the company has only installed a few demonstration walls using Greensulate, its insulation material. And the company is releasing limited quantities of “Acorn,” its packing material, as custom-made packaging for certain Northeast manufacturers in 2009.
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http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/using-fungi-to-replace-styrofoam/
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=19101914