Modern manufacturing methods are spectacularly inefficient in their use of energy and materials, according to a detailed MIT analysis of the energy use of 20 major manufacturing processes. Overall, new manufacturing systems are anywhere from 1,000 to one million times bigger consumers of energy, per pound of output, than more traditional industries. In short, pound for pound, making microchips uses up orders of magnitude more energy than making manhole covers.
At first glance, it may seem strange to make comparisons between such widely disparate processes as metal casting and chip making. But Professor Timothy Gutowski of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, who led the analysis, explains that such a broad comparison of energy efficiency is an essential first step toward optimizing these newer manufacturing methods as they gear up for ever-larger production. "The seemingly extravagant use of materials and energy resources by many newer manufacturing processes is alarming and needs to be addressed alongside claims of improved sustainability from products manufactured by these means," Gutowksi and his colleagues say in their conclusion to the study, which was recently published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).
Gutowksi notes that manufacturers have traditionally been more concerned about factors like price, quality, or cycle time, and not as concerned over how much energy their manufacturing processes use. This latter issue will become more important, however, as the new industries scale up -- especially if energy prices rise again or if a carbon tax is adopted, he says. Solar panels are a good example. Their production, which uses some of the same manufacturing processes as microchips but on a large scale, is escalating dramatically. The inherent inefficiency of current solar panel manufacturing methods could drastically reduce the technology's lifecycle energy balance -- that is, the ratio of the energy the panel would produce over its useful lifetime to the energy required to manufacture it. The new study is just "the first step in doing something about it," Gutowski says -- understanding which processes are most inefficient and need further research to develop less energy-intensive alternatives. For example, many of the newer processes involve vapor-phase processing (such as sputtering, in which a material is vaporized in a vacuum chamber so that it deposits a coating on an exposed surface in that chamber), which is usually much less efficient than liquid phase (such as depositing a coating from a liquid solution), but liquid processing alternatives might be developed.
The study covered everything "from soup to nuts" in terms of standard industrial methods, Gutowski says, "from heavy-duty old fashioned industries like a cast-iron foundry, all the way up to semiconductors and nanomaterials." It includes injection molding, sputtering, carbon nanofiber production and dry etching, along with more traditional machining, milling, drilling and melting. There were some boundaries on the processes studied, however: The researchers did not analyze production of pharmaceuticals or petroleum, and they only looked primarily at processes where electricity was the primary energy source. The figures the team derived are actually conservative, Gutowski says, because they did not include some significant energy costs such as the energy required to make the materials themselves or the energy required to maintain the environment of the plant (such as air conditioning and filtration for clean rooms used in semiconductor processing). "All these things would make [the energy costs] worse," he says.
The bottom line is that "new processes are huge users of materials and energy," he says. Because some of these processes are so new, "they will be optimized and improved over time," he says. But as things stand now, over the last several decades as traditional processes such as machining and casting have increasingly given way to newer ones for the production of semiconductors, MEMS and nano-materials and devices, for a given quantity of output "we have increased our energy and materials consumption by three to six orders of magnitude." One message from the study is that "claims that these technologies are going to save us in some way need closer scrutiny. There's a significant energy cost involved here," he says. And another is that "each of these processes could be improved," and using the analytical tools developed by the MIT team for this study would be a useful first step in such a detailed analysis. In addition to Gutowski, the study was done by current and former MIT mechanical engineering students Matthew Branham, Jeffrey Dahmus, Alissa Jones and Alexandre Thiriez, and Dusan Sekulic, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Kentucky. It was funded by the National Science Foundation. A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 18, 2009
Climate change will seriously impact public health, but the United States has yet to allocate adequate research funding to understand and prepare for these impacts, according to a report published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The report suggests that the current knowledge gap regarding climate change and public health is putting multitudes at risk and calls for a major expansion of research to tackle this problem. The report emphasizes that global warming is expected to worsen many health problems, including heat-related mortality, diarrheal diseases, and diseases associated with exposure to ozone and allergens from the air. Health effects are also likely to result from altered air, water, agriculture, and ecosystems processes, according to the report.
"This paper highlights the gap in our understanding of current impacts of climate on health, and how those impacts may amplify in the future," says report author Patrick Kinney, ScD, associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences and director of the Program in Climate and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, which is at the forefront of research on climate and health. "Such knowledge is critical if we are to invest wisely in preventive and adaptive responses now that can avert enormous human and financial costs later." Despite these facts, federal funding of health research related to climate change is estimated to be less than $3 million per year. This level of U.S. funding, the report states, "appears to be due to the low priority placed on identifying and managing the health risks of climate change by Congress and the Federal government." The report estimates that more than $200 million is needed annually to sponsor "robust intra- and extramural programs" in federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Funding research on climate change and health "that is directly linked to protective action at the local level is a wise investment, consistent with the goals of restoring economic stability, justice and environmental quality, and reducing healthcare costs," the report states. The report is co-written by the same authors who wrote the Climate Change and Human Health chapter in the July 2008 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report: "Analyses of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems." In addition to Dr. Kinney of the Mailman School of Public Health, the authors are from the Environmental Defense Fund, the University of Georgia, the University of Michigan, and Stratus Consulting, Inc. In recognition of the critical importance of climate change and its adverse effects on health, the Mailman School of Public Health established a Program on Climate and Health in early 2009 led by Dr. Patrick Kinney to provide coordination and leadership to address these issues.
Cleaning fluids used in hospitals may pose a health risk to both staff and patients. A pilot study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Health has found that potentially hazardous chemicals are contained in a selection of agents used in several different hospitals. The study was conducted at the University of Massachusetts Lowell Sustainable Hospitals Program (www.sustainableproduction.org) and led by Anila Bello. Other team members were Margaret Quinn and Don Milton, also from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Melissa Perry, from the Harvard School of Public Health.
They investigated the cleaning materials and techniques used in six Massachusetts hospitals. Bello said, "Cleaning products may impact worker, and possibly patient, health through air and skin exposures. Because the severity of cleaning exposures is affected by both product formulation and cleaning technique, a combination of product evaluation and workplace exposure data is needed to develop strategies that protect people from cleaning hazards." Cleaning products are complex mixtures of many chemicals including disinfectants, surfactants, solvents, and fragrances. These ingredients are representative of different chemical classes and have a very wide range of volatilities and other chemical properties. According to Bello, "The ingredients of concern identified in our study included quaternary ammonium chlorides or "quats" that can cause skin and respiratory irritation. Some products contained irritant glycol ethers that can be absorbed through the skin, as well as ethanolamine - another respiratory and dermatological irritant. We also found several alcohols such as benzyl alcohol, ammonia and several phenols, all of which can exert harmful effects on the body". As well as the composition of cleaning agents, the authors found that the way the products were used affected exposure levels. Some tasks were associated with higher exposures than others; the most hazardous exposure scenarios occur when several cleaning tasks are performed in small and poorly ventilated spaces, such as bathrooms.
The authors conclude, "Hazardous exposures related to cleaning products are an important public health concern because these exposures may impact not only cleaning workers, but also other occupants in the building".
Study shows drinking water contaminated with potent estrogen Plastic packaging is not without its downsides, and if you thought mineral water was 'clean', it may be time to think again. According to Martin Wagner and Jörg Oehlmann from the Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, plastic mineral water bottles contaminate drinking water with estrogenic chemicals. In an analysis1 of commercially available mineral waters, the researchers found evidence of estrogenic compounds leaching out of the plastic packaging into the water. What's more, these chemicals are potent in vivo and result in an increased development of embryos in the New Zealand mud snail. These findings, which show for the first time that substances leaching out of plastic food packaging materials act as functional estrogens, are published in Springer's journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
Wagner and Oehlmann looked at whether the migration of substances from packaging material into foodstuffs contributes to human exposure to man-made hormones. They analyzed 20 brands of mineral water available in Germany - nine bottled in glass, nine bottled in plastic and two bottled in composite packaging (paperboard boxes coated with an inner plastic film). The researchers took water samples from the bottles and tested them for the presence of estrogenic chemicals in vitro. They then carried out a reproduction test with the New Zealand mud snail to determine the source and potency of the xenoestrogens. They detected estrogen contamination in 60% of the samples (12 of the 20 brands) analyzed. Mineral waters in glass bottles were less estrogenic than waters in plastic bottles. Specifically, 33% of all mineral waters bottled in glass compared with 78% of waters in plastic bottles and both waters bottled in composite packaging showed significant hormonal activity. By breeding the New Zealand mud snail in both plastic and glass water bottles, the researchers found more than double the number of embryos in plastic bottles compared with glass bottles. Taken together, these results demonstrate widespread contamination of mineral water with potent man-made estrogens that partly originate from compounds leaching out of the plastic packaging material.
The authors conclude: "We must have identified just the tip of the iceberg in that plastic packaging may be a major source of xenohormone* contamination of many other edibles. Our findings provide an insight into the potential exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals due to unexpected sources of contamination." *man-made substance that has a hormone-like effect
Reference 1. Wagner M & Oehlmann J (2009). Endocrine disruptors in bottled mineral water: total estrogenic burden and migration from plastic bottles. Environ Sci Pollut Res; [10.1007/s11356-009-0107-7]
The full-text article can be provided as a pdf on request or viewed free of charge at http://www.springerlink.com/content/515wg76276q18115/?p=13b47e03f3414b128d9ad2797b775973&pi=0
Chemists reported development of what they termed the first economical, eco-friendly process to convert algae oil into biodiesel fuel - a discovery they predict could one day lead to U.S. independence from petroleum as a fuel. One of the problems with current methods for producing biodiesel from algae oil is the processing cost, and the New York researchers say their innovative process is at least 40 percent cheaper than that of others now being used. Supply will not be a problem: There is a limitless amount of algae growing in oceans, lakes, and rivers, throughout the world. Another benefit from the "continuously flowing fixed-bed" method to create algae biodiesel, they add, is that there is no wastewater produced to cause pollution.
"This is the first economical way to produce biodiesel from algae oil," according to lead researcher Ben Wen, Ph.D., vice president of United Environment and Energy LLC, Horseheads, N.Y. "It costs much less than conventional processes because you would need a much smaller factory, there are no water disposal costs, and the process is considerably faster." A key advantage of this new process, he says, is that it uses a proprietary solid catalyst developed at his company instead of liquid catalysts used by other scientists today. First, the solid catalyst can be used over and over. Second, it allows the continuously flowing production of biodiesel, compared to the method using a liquid catalyst. That process is slower because workers need to take at least a half hour after producing each batch to create more biodiesel. They need to purify the biodiesel by neutralizing the base catalyst by adding acid. No such action is needed to treat the solid catalyst, Wen explains. He estimates algae has an "oil-per-acre production rate 100-300 times the amount of soybeans, and offers the highest yield feedstock for biodiesel and the most promising source for mass biodiesel production to replace transportation fuel in the United States." He says that his firm is now conducting a pilot program for the process with a production capacity of nearly 1 million gallons of algae biodiesel per year. Depending on the size of the machinery and the plant, he said it is possible that a company could produce up to 50 million gallons of algae biodiesel annually. Wen also says that the solid catalyst continuous flow method can be adapted to mobile units so that smaller companies wouldn't have to construct plants and the military could use the process in the field
In the future, natural gas derived from chunks of ice that workers collect from beneath the ocean floor and beneath the arctic permafrost may fuel cars, heat homes, and power factories. Government researchers are reporting that these so-called "gas hydrates," a frozen form of natural gas that bursts into flames at the touch of a match, show increasing promise as an abundant, untapped source of clean, sustainable energy. The icy chunks could supplement traditional energy sources that are in short supply and which produce large amounts of carbon dioxide linked to global warming, the scientists say. "These gas hydrates could serve as a bridge to our energy future until cleaner fuel sources, such as hydrogen and solar energy, are more fully realized," says study co-leader Tim Collett, Ph.D., a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Denver, Colo. Gas hydrates, known as "ice that burns," hold special promise for helping to combat global warming by leaving a smaller carbon dioxide footprint than other fossil fuels, Collett and colleagues note.
Last November, a team of USGS researchers that included Collett announced a giant step toward that bridge to the future. In a landmark study, the USGS scientists estimated that 85.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could potentially be extracted from gas hydrates in Alaska's North Slope region, enough to heat more than 100 million average homes for more than a decade. "It's definitely a vast storehouse of energy," Collett says. "But it is still unknown how much of this volume can actually be produced on an industrial scale." That volume, he says, depends on the ability of scientists to extract useful methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, from gas hydrate formations in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Scientists worldwide are now doing research on gas hydrates in order to understand how this strange material forms and how it might be used to supplement coal, oil, and traditional natural gas.
Although scientists have known about gas hydrates for decades, they've only recently begun to try to use them as an alternative energy source. Gas hydrates, also known as "clathrates," form when methane gas from the decomposition of organic material comes into contact with water at low temperatures and high pressures. Those cold, high-pressure conditions exist deep below the oceans and underground on land in certain parts of the world, including the ocean floor and permafrost areas of the Arctic. Today, researchers are finding tremendous stores of gas hydrates throughout the world, including United States, India, and Japan. In addition to Alaska, the United States has vast gas hydrate deposits in the Gulf of Mexico and off its eastern coast. Interest in and support of hydrate research is now growing worldwide. Japan and India currently have among the largest, most well-funded hydrate research programs in the world. "Once we have learned better how to find the most promising gas hydrate deposits, we will need to know how to produce it in a safe and commercially-viable way," says study co-author Ray Boswell, Ph.D. He manages the National Methane Hydrate R&D Program of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, W. Va. "Chemistry will be a big part of understanding just how the hydrates will respond to various production methods."
One of the more promising techniques for extracting methane from hydrates involves simply depressurizing the deposits, Boswell says. Another method involves exchanging the methane molecules in the "clathrate" structure with carbon dioxide. Workers can, in theory, collect the gas using the same drilling technology used for conventional oil and gas drilling. Under the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act of 2000, the U.S. government has already spent several million dollars, in collaboration with universities and private companies, to investigate gas hydrates as an alternative energy source. Scientists are particularly optimistic about the vast stores of gas hydrates located in Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico. Research is also accelerating under the U.S. Department of Energy and USGS to better understand gas hydrate's role in the natural environment and in climate change. "Gas hydrates are totally doable," Collett says. "But when and where we will see them depends on need, motivation, and our supply of other energy resources. In the next five to ten years, the research potential of gas hydrates will be more fully realized."
SALT LAKE CITY, March 23, 2009 - Exploiting a little-known punch/counterpunch strategy in the ongoing battle between disease-causing fungi and crop plants, scientists in Canada are reporting development of a new class of "green" fungicides that could provide a safer, more environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional fungicides. They will report on the first pesticides to capitalize on this unique defensive strategy here today at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Developed with sustainable agriculture in mind, the new fungicides - called "paldoxins" - could still do the work of conventional pesticides, helping to protect corn, wheat and other crops. These crops increasingly are used not just for food, but to make biofuels. The new fungicides also could help fight the growing problem of resistance, in which plant pests shrug off fungicides, the researchers suggest.
Most fungicides today are made based on chemicals that can kill potentially beneficial organisms and have other adverse environmental effects. The new materials are more selective, stopping fungi that cause plant diseases without harming other organisms. They work in a unique way, disrupting a key chemical signalling pathway that the fungi use to breakdown a plant's normal defenses. As a result, the plants boost their natural defenses and overcome fungal attack without harming people and the environment, the researchers say. "Conventional fungicides kill constantly," explains study leader Soledade Pedras, Ph.D., a professor of chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. "Our products only attack the fungus when it's misbehaving or attacking the plant. And for that reason, they're much safer." Researchers have known for years that many plants have a defense mechanism that involves production of natural chemicals, called phytoalexins, to kill disease-causing fungi. The fungus, however, fights back. It releases enzymes that detoxify, or destroy, the phytoalexin, leaving the plant vulnerable to the fungi's attack.
To take advantage of that punch-counterpunch strategy, Pedras and her colleagues proposed the development of new anti-fungal agents to block the fungi's destruction of phytoalexins. They termed these new agents paldoxins, short for phytoalexin detoxification inhibitors. Pedras discovered those agents after screening broccoli, cauliflower, mustard greens and other plants in the so-called "crucifer family." They discovered the most powerful phytoalexin in a flowering plant called camelina or "false flax." In laboratory tests, camelina phytoalexins blocked detoxifying enzymes produced by a wide variety of fungi. "We found that many fungi couldn't degrade this chemical," says Pedras. "So that's what we used to design synthetic versions that were even stronger than the original." The researchers now have developed six different synthetic versions of the paldoxins, which are essentially potent inhibitors of fungal enzymes.
The researchers have successfully tested the synthetic paldoxins in the lab on several crucifer plants, including rapeseed plants and mustard greens. Pedras' group plan field tests of their new fungicides on other important crop varieties. In the future, a similar strategy will be applied to grasses such as wheat, rye, and oat. These grassy plants tend to be more difficult to protect with fungicides than broccoli and related veggies, the researchers say. If studies continue to show promise, the paldoxins could be marketed quickly, within a few years, Pedras says. The new fungicides could be applied like conventional pesticides.
A five-nation scientific team has published new evidence that even a slight rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, one of the gases that drives global warming, affects the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The massive WAIS covers the continent on the Pacific side of the Transantarctic Mountains. Any substantial melting of the ice sheet would cause a rise in global sea levels. The research, which was published in the March 19 issue of the journal Nature, is based on investigations by a 56-member team of scientists conducted on a 1,280-meter (4,100-foot)-long sedimentary rock core taken from beneath the sea floor under Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf during the first project of the ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) research program--the McMurdo Ice Shelf (MIS) Project.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), which manages the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), provided about $20 million in support of the ANDRILL program. The other ANDRILL national partners contributed an additional $10 million in science and logistics support. "The sedimentary record from the ANDRILL project provides scientists with an important analogue that can be used to help predict how ice shelves and the massive WAIS will respond to future global warming over the next few centuries," said Ross Powell, a professor of geology at Northern Illinois University. "The sedimentary record indicates that under global warming conditions that were similar to those projected to occur over the next century, protective ice shelves could shrink or even disappear and the WAIS would become vulnerable to melting," Powell said. "If the current warm period persists, the ice sheet could diminish substantially or even disappear over time. This would result in a potentially significant rise in sea levels." ANDRILL--which involves scientists from the United States, New Zealand, Italy and Germany--refines previous findings about the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, sea level rise and natural cycles in Earth's orbit around the Sun, through the study of sediment and rock cores that are a geological archive of past climate.
The dynamics of ice sheets, including WAIS, are not well understood, and improving scientists' comprehension of the mechanisms that control the growth, melting and movements of ice sheets was one of NSF's research priorities during the International Polar Year (IPY). The IPY field campaign, which officially ended March 2009, has been an intense scientific campaign to explore new frontiers in polar science, improve our understanding of the critical role of the polar regions in global processes, and educate students, teachers, and the public about the polar regions and their importance to the global system. NSF was the lead agency for U.S. IPY efforts. The cores retrieved by ANDRILL researchers have allowed them to peer back in time to the Pliocene era, roughly 2 million to 5 million years ago. During that era, the Antarctic was in a natural climate state that was warmer than today and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were higher. Data from the cores indicate the WAIS advanced and retreated numerous times in response to forcing driven by these climate cycles.
Powell and Tim Naish, director of Victoria University of Wellington's Antarctic Research Centre, served as co-chief scientists of the 2006-2007 ANDRILL project that retrieved the data and are lead authors in one of two companion studies published in Nature. Naish said the new information gleaned from the core shows that changes in the tilt of Earth's rotational axis has played a major role in ocean warming that has driven repeated cycles of growth and retreat of the WAIS for the period in Earth's history between 3 million and 5 million years ago. "It also appears that when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reached 400 parts per million around four million years ago, the associated global warming amplified the effect of the Earth's axial tilt on the stability of the ice sheet," he said.
"Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is again approaching 400 parts per million," Naish said. "Geological archives, such as the ANDRILL core, highlight the risk that a significant body of permanent Antarctic ice could be lost within the next century as Earth's climate continues to warm. Based on ANDRILL data combined with computer models of ice sheet behavior, collapse of the entire WAIS is likely to occur on the order of 1,000 years, but recent studies show that melting has already begun." The second ANDRILL study in Nature--led by David Pollard of Pennsylvania State University and Rob DeConto from University of Massachusetts--reports results from a computer model of the ice sheets. The model shows that each time the WAIS collapsed, some of the margins of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet also melted, and the combined effect was a global sea level rise of 7 meters above present-day levels.
Whether the beginnings of such a collapse could start 100 years from now or within the next millennium is hard to predict and depends on future atmospheric CO2 levels, the researchers said. However, the new information from ANDRILL contributes a missing piece of the puzzle as scientists try to refine their predictions of the effects of global warming. The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that because so little is understood about ice sheet behavior it is difficult to predict how ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise in a warming world. The behavior of ice sheets, the IPCC report said, is one of the major uncertainties in predicting exactly how the warming of the globe will affect human populations. "From these combined data modeling studies, we can say that past warming events caused West Antarctic ice shelves and ice grounded below sea level to melt and disappear. The modeling suggests these collapses took one to a few thousand years," Pollard said.
Pollard and DeConto also underscored the role of ocean temperatures in melting of the ice. "It's clear from our combined research using geological data and modeling that ocean temperatures play a key role," DeConto said. "The most substantial melting of protective ice shelves comes from beneath the ice, where it is in contact with seawater. We now need more data to determine what is happening to the underside of contemporary ice shelves."
Global warming is expected to cause the sea level along the northeastern U.S. coast to rise almost twice as fast as global sea levels during this century, putting New York City at greater risk for damage from hurricanes and winter storm surge, according to a new study led by a Florida State University researcher. Jianjun Yin, a climate modeler at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) at Florida State, said there is a better than 90 percent chance that the sea level rise along this heavily populated coast will exceed the mean global sea level rise by the year 2100. The rising waters in this region -- perhaps by as much as 18 inches or more -- can be attributed to thermal expansion and the slowing of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation because of warmer ocean surface temperatures.
Yin and colleagues Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ronald Stouffer of Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University are the first to reach that conclusion after analyzing data from 10 state-of-the-art climate models, which have been used for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report. Yin's study, "Model Projections of Rapid Sea Level Rise on the Northeast Coast of the United States," will be published online March 15 in the journal Nature Geoscience. "The northeast coast of the United States is among the most vulnerable regions to future changes in sea level and ocean circulation, especially when considering its population density and the potential socioeconomic consequences of such changes," Yin said. "The most populous states and cities of the United States and centers of economy, politics, culture and education are located along that coast."
The researchers found that the rapid sea-level rise occurred in all climate models whether they depicted low, medium or high rates of greenhouse-gas emissions. In a medium greenhouse-gas emission scenario, the New York City coastal area would see an additional rise of about 8.3 inches above the mean sea level rise that is expected around the globe because of human-induced climate change. Thermal expansion and the melting of land ice, such as the Greenland ice sheet, are expected to cause the global sea-level rise. The researchers projected the global sea-level rise of 10.2 inches based on thermal expansion alone. The contribution from the land ice melting was not assessed in this study due to uncertainty. Considering that much of the metropolitan region of New York City is less than 16 feet above the mean sea level, with some parts of lower Manhattan only about 5 feet above the mean sea level, a rise of 8.3 inches in addition to the global mean rise would pose a threat to this region, especially if a hurricane or winter storm surge occurs, Yin said.
Potential flooding is just one example of coastal hazards associated with sea-level rise, Yin said, but there are other concerns as well. The submersion of low-lying land, erosion of beaches, conversion of wetlands to open water and increase in the salinity of estuaries all can affect ecosystems and damage existing coastal development. Although low-lying Florida and Western Europe are often considered the most vulnerable to sea level changes, the northeast U.S. coast is particularly vulnerable because the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is susceptible to global warming. The AMOC is the giant circulation in the Atlantic with warm and salty seawater flowing northward in the upper ocean and cold seawater flowing southward at depth. Global warming could cause an ocean surface warming and freshening in the high-latitude North Atlantic, preventing the sinking of the surface water, which would slow the AMOC.
A rising tide is said to lift all boats. Rising global temperatures, however, may lead to increased disparities between rich and poor countries, according to a recent MIT economic analysis of the impact of climate change on growth. After examining worldwide climate and economic data from 1950 to 2003, Benjamin A. Olken, associate professor in the Department of Economics, concludes that a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature in a given year reduces economic growth by an average of 1.1 percentage points in the world's poor countries but has no measurable effect in rich countries. Olken says his research suggests higher temperatures will be disproportionately bad for the economic growth of poor countries compared to rich countries.
The precise reasons why higher temperatures lower economic output are likely to be complex, but Olken's results suggest the importance of temperature's impact on agricultural output. His data also provide evidence for a relationship between temperature and industrial output, investment, research productivity and political stability. "The potential impacts of an increase in temperature on poor countries are much larger than existing estimates have suggested," Olken says. "Although historical estimates don't necessarily predict the future, our results suggest that one should be particularly attentive to the potential impact of climate change on poorer countries." Olken's analysis is contained in "Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," a paper co-authored by MIT economics graduate student Melissa Dell and Benjamin F. Jones, associate management professor at Northwestern University. The paper is currently under review for publication. Olken, who has been researching issues of growth and temperature for about two years, presented some of the findings at a recent conference of the American Economic Association. Growing hot-cold divide
It has long been observed that hotter countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America, tend to be poorer than cooler countries in North America and Europe; the main exceptions are hot, rich Middle East countries with oil reserves and cold, poor Communist or former Communist states like North Korea and Mongolia. What contemporary scholars have debated, however, is whether climate has a significant effect on a country's economy today or whether it is institutions and policies that now solely drive prosperity. To conduct their research, Olken and his co-authors used existing data sets of economic growth and productivity -- everything from gross domestic product to the rate of publication of scientific papers -- and combined them with country-by-country temperature and precipitation data from 1950 to 2003. Olken and his co-authors conclude that rising temperatures do substantially reduce economic output and growth rates in both agricultural and industrial sectors, but only in countries that are already poor. Higher temperatures also reduce investment and innovation but, again, only in poor nations.
Rising temperatures may also have political consequences, the authors found. A one-degree rise in temperature in poor countries raises the likelihood of a so-called irregular leader transition (i.e., a coup) by 3.9 percentage points. Olken acknowledges that the long-term impact of temperature change might be different from the short-term effect since countries may adapt to a particular climate over time. But his research found no such adaptation over a 10-year time horizon. Should the future effects mirror recent history, world policy makers should be prepared for a widening gap between rich and poor countries as the globe continues to warm, he says.
Combating climate change may not be a question of who will carry the burden but could instead be a rush for the benefits, according to new economic modeling presented today at "Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions" hosted by the University of Copenhagen. Contrary to current cost models for lowering greenhouse gas emissions and fighting climate change, a group of researchers from the University of Cambridge conclude that even very stringent reductions of can create a macroeconomic benefit, if governments go about it the right way.
"Where many current calculations get it wrong is in the assumption that more stringent measures will necessarily raise the overall cost, especially when there is substantial unemployment and underuse of capacity as there is today", explains Terry Barker, Director of Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR), Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Congress.
"There is some evidence that harder greenhouse gas targets and regulation may actually increase benefits through improved innovation and distribution of low carbon technologies, and increased revenues from taxes or permits. These revenues can be spent to further support new technology and to lower other indirect taxes, ensuring the fiscal neutrality of these measures", says Barker. "The current global financial crisis must be seen as a timely stimulus to tackling climate change, not a hindrance. If all G20 countries adopted a Green New Deal similar to that proposed by President Obama, the world economy could be greatly strengthened, especially the sectors producing low-carbon technologies," he adds. "But global coordination is critical. Any single country's New Deal may fail if its extra demand for goods and services are met with imports. If we act together, everyone's exports will increase and we can recover employment much quicker".
The prospect of extra growth for the economy from mitigating climate change also raises the possibility of generating funds for helping developing countries adapt to the changes that are now inevitable. "This 'New Marshall Plan' for the climate would be beneficial to all parties", says Barker. Though the debate on whether tackling climate change will be a burden or a boost to the economy is still ongoing, the findings presented at the IARU Climate Change Congress show that inaction on climate change has significant and often unexpected economic costs.
One study presented today shows that productivity among New Delhi's outdoor laborers has already declined 10 percent since 1980 as a direct result of climate change. A further temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius could cut productivity by another 20 percent. "Increasing excessive heat exposure affects the daily life, work and health of poor people in tropical countries ? that effect of climate change has been ignored until now", says Tord Kjellström, visiting fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australian National University. A forestry study shows that a shift in production from cold adapted coniferous species such as Norway Spruce to more heat tolerant broadleaves like oak would create significant net losses in the value of forestland in Europe. The forest area of Europe (excluding Russia) is approximately 1.6 million km2. Applying a model that predicts the shift of 32 major tree species in this area reveals that under a scenario with an assumed increase of temperature of almost 6°C in 2100, large areas of Europe will be covered by a Mediterranean oak vegetation type with rather low economic productivity. "The loss of the value of forest land linked to that process is estimated to be worth an average of 200 billion Euro," said Marc Hanewinkel, professor at the Forest Research Institute of Baden-Wuerttemberg, University of Freiburg, Germany.
Similarly a study shows that while it will cost up to 128 billion yen (1 billion euro) to secure Japanese harbors against stronger winds and more frequent storms, failure to do so could result in the loss of 1.5 to 3.4 percent of Japan's GDP by 2085 (Japanese GDP in 2007 was 3.41 trillion euro). This is due to an increased number of days where harbors will be forced to close. "Port planners should factor this in when designing port capacities. Their designs must be able to prevent delays and increased downtime due to winds and rain. Similarly, they must plan for sea defenses that can limit damage caused by waves. Failure to do so could lead to bottlenecks in the shipments of products and constrain Japanese economic growth" urges Miguel Esteban, Postdoctoral Fellow at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies.
Is wood the new coal? Researchers at North Carolina State University think so, and they are part of a team working to turn woodchips into a substitute for coal by using a process called torrefaction that is greener, cleaner and more efficient than traditional coal burning. Environmental organizations have raised concerns for decades about the environmental impact of the burning of fossil fuels - particularly coal - for energy. The combustion of coal contributes to acid rain and air pollution, and has been connected with global warming. During torrefaction, woodchips go through a machine - almost like an industrial-sized oven - to remove the moisture and toast the biomass. The machine, called a torrefier, changes more than just the appearance of the woody biomass. The chips become physically and chemically altered - through heat in a low-oxygen environment - to make them drier and easier to crush. The torrefied wood is lighter than the original woodchips but retains 80 percent of the original energy content in one-third the weight. That makes them an ideal feedstock for electric power plants that traditionally use coal to generate energy for businesses and residential neighborhoods.
While the process of torrefaction is nothing new, NC State's particular torrefier machine, called the Autothermic Transportable Torrefaction Machine (ATTM), is field portable and self-heated. Traditional torrefier machines are bulky and immobile, but the ATTM lends itself to field-based operations, which reduces the cost of transporting tons of woody biomass to and from the combustion facilities. The ATTM is also largely self-powered, producing a large energy return while also removing carbon from the atmosphere. "This process could help us build a bridge to more energy independence," says Chris Hopkins, a doctoral student in forestry at NC State and developer of the torrefier machine. Woodchips are abundant in North Carolina while coal is all imported from other states. More importantly, woodchips are a carbon neutral source of energy. For a state that spends more than $4 billion a year importing coal, use of torrefied wood could result in an economic windfall.
Hopkins explains that nearly half of the state's forests are not adequately thinned because landowners lack a market for small diameter trees, rotten or unusable trees and logging residue. That land could be producing more valuable wood products if it was managed more effectively, he says. If woodchips were collected and sold to help fire North Carolina's energy generating plants, the state's tax base could be increased by nearly $400 million a year, Hopkins estimates. Since the torrefier machine is small enough to transport, it could be set up close to forest-clearing operations, making the process even more efficient. NC State's Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) announced an exclusive license agreement with AgriTech Producers, LLC of Columbia, S.C. to commercialize this technology, called "Carolina Coal." Billy B. Houghteling, director of OTT, says, "This partnership is an example of how NC State contributes to the strengthening of our state and national economy. By partnering with organizations like AgriTech, the university's scientific discoveries move beyond the Belltower and into the marketplace where they can really make a difference."
A gas used for fumigation has the potential to contribute significantly to future greenhouse warming, but because its production has not yet reached high levels there is still time to nip this potential contributor in the bud, according to an international team of researchers.
Scientists at MIT, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and other institutions are reporting the results of their study of the gas, sulfuryl fluoride, this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The researchers have measured the levels of the gas in the atmosphere, and determined its emissions and lifetime to help gauge its potential future effects on climate. Sulfuryl fluoride was introduced as a replacement for methyl bromide, a widely used fumigant that is being phased out under the Montreal Protocol because of its ozone-destroying chemistry. Methyl bromide has been widely used for insect control in grain-storage facilities, and in intensive agriculture in arid lands where drip irrigation is combined with covering of the land with plastic sheets to control evaporation. "Such fumigants are very important for controlling pests in the agricultural and building sectors," says Ron Prinn, director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science and a co-author on the new paper. But with methyl bromide being phased out, "industry had to find alternatives, so sulfuryl fluoride has evolved to fill the role," he says.
Until the new work, nobody knew accurately how long the gas would last in the atmosphere after it leaked out of buildings or grain silos. "Our analysis has shown that the lifetime is about 36 years, or eight times greater than previously thought, with the ocean being its dominant sink," Prinn says. So it would become "a greenhouse gas of some importance if the quantity of its use grows as people expect." For now, the gas is only present in the atmosphere in very small quantities of about 1.5 parts per trillion, though it is increasing by about 5 percent per year. Its newly reported 36-year lifetime, along with studies of its infrared-absorbing properties by researchers at NOAA, "indicate that, ton for ton, it is about 4,800 times more potent a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide" says Prinn.
Fortunately, though, "we've caught it very early in the game," says Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. The detection was made through a NASA-sponsored global research program called the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE). "In AGAGE, we don't just monitor the big greenhouse gases that everybody's heard of," he says. "This program is also designed to sniff out potential greenhouse and ozone-depleting gases before the industry gets very big." The lead author of the research paper is Jens Mühle of Scripps, and besides Prinn, the co-authors include Jin Huang, a research scientist at MIT's Center for Global Change Science, Ray Weiss of Scripps, who co-directs AGAGE with Prinn, and eight others from Scripps, the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.
"Unfortunately, it turns out that sulfuryl fluoride is a greenhouse gas with a longer lifetime than previously assumed," says Mühle. "This has to be taken into account before large amounts are emitted into the atmosphere." Prinn adds that "fumigation is a big industry, and it's absolutely needed to preserve our buildings and food supply." But identifying the greenhouse risks from this particular compound, before many factories have been built to produce it in very large amounts, would give the industry a chance to find other substitutes at a time when that's still a relatively easy change to implement. "Given human inventiveness, there are surely other alternatives out there," says Prinn. He describes this approach as "a new frontier for environmental science -- to try to head off potential dangers as early as possible, rather than wait until it's a mature industry with lots of capital and jobs at stake."
Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the resulting effects on ocean water are making it increasingly difficult for coral reefs to grow, say scientists. A study to be published online March 13, 2009 in Geophysical Research Letters by researchers at the Carnegie Institution and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem warns that if carbon dioxide reaches double pre-industrial levels, coral reefs can be expected to not just stop growing, but also to begin dissolving all over the world.
The impact on reefs is a consequence of both ocean acidification caused by the absorption of carbon dioxide into seawater and rising water temperatures. Previous studies have shown that rising carbon dioxide will slow coral growth, but this is the first study to show that coral reefs can be expected to start dissolving just about everywhere in just a few decades, unless carbon dioxide emissions are cut deeply and soon.
"Globally, each second, we dump over 1000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and, each second, about 300 tons of that carbon dioxide is going into the oceans," said co-author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, testifying to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife of the Committee on Natural Resources on February 25, 2009. "We can say with a high degree of certainty that all of this CO2 will make the oceans more acidic - that is simple chemistry taught to freshman college students."
The study was designed determine the impact of this acidification on coral reefs. The research team, consisting of Jacob Silverman, Caldeira, and Long Cao of the Carnegie Institution as well as Boaz Lazar and Jonathan Erez from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, used field data from coral reefs to determine the effects of temperature and water chemistry on coral calcification rates. Armed with this information, they plugged the data into a computer model that calculated global seawater temperature and chemistry at different atmospheric levels of CO2 ranging from the pre-industrial value of 280 ppm (parts per million) to 750 ppm. The current atmospheric concentration is over 380 ppm, and is rapidly rising due to human-caused emissions, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels.
Based on the model results for more than 9,000 reef locations, the researchers determined that at the highest concentration studied, 750 ppm, acidification of seawater would reduce calcification rates of three quarters of the world's reefs to less than 20% of pre-industrial rates. Field studies suggest that at such low rates, coral growth would not be able to keep up with dissolution and other natural as well as manmade destructive processes attacking reefs. Prospects for reefs are even gloomier when the effects of coral bleaching are included in the model. Coral bleaching refers to the loss of symbiotic algae that are essential for healthy growth of coral colonies. Bleaching is already a widespread problem, and high temperatures are among the factors known to promote bleaching. According to their model the researchers calculated that under present conditions 30% of reefs have already undergone bleaching and that at CO2 levels of 560 ppm (twice pre-industrial levels) the combined effects of acidification and bleaching will reduce the calcification rates of all the world's reefs by 80% or more. This lowered calcification rate will render all reefs vulnerable to dissolution, without even considering other threats to reefs, such as pollution. "Our fossil-fueled lifestyle is killing off coral reefs," says Caldeira. "If we don't change our ways soon, in the next few decades we will destroy what took millions of years to create." "Coral reefs may be the canary in the coal mine," he adds. "Other major pieces of our planet may be similarly threatened because we are using the atmosphere and oceans as dumps for our CO2 pollution. We can save the reefs if we decide to treat our planet with the care it deserves. We need to power our economy with technologies that do not dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or oceans."
Link to House Subcommittee testimony: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/index.php?option=com_jcalpro&Itemid=51&extmode=view&extid=224 The Carnegie Institution (www.CIW.edu) has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments throughout the U.S. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science. The Department of Global Ecology, located in Stanford, California, was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. Its scientists conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological invasions, and changes in biodiversity.
Natural burial is often thought of as a green option that takes place in the countryside for non-religious people, but according to researchers at the University of Sheffield, that is only part of the story. 'Lots of different approaches to natural burial have evolved since 1993 when the first site was opened,' explains Mr Andy Clayden, who is leading the research team, which includes Professor Jenny Hockey and Dr Trish Green, 'they cater for people who want a more informal setting in keeping with the person they want to remember. There is no conflict with faith.' The topic is to be discussed at an event on Natural Burial: Do we need a Headstone? to be held in Sheffield on March 14 as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Festival of Social Science.
There are now over 200 natural burial grounds across the UK ranging from extensions to local authority cemeteries to sites owned by charitable trusts or private individuals. The project, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is looking at the range of services on offer and the wider impact of natural burial both on the people involved and the landscape. The researchers have already visited 20 sites and are continuing to interview managers, bereaved people, funeral professionals and members of the local community. They will also be conducting an in-depth study of four sites with different interpretations of what natural burial means. Early findings suggest that natural burial is attractive to people who want to construct their own way of remembering a relative. Natural burial grounds vary tremendously in terms of the habitats they are trying to create or protect. For example some sites offer a specific guidance on what trees or wildflower seeds can be planted whilst other burial grounds may have a more relaxed and permissive approach. There are sites where the dead are almost completely anonymous; the field may be cut for hay or grazed by sheep.
'People have told us they like to visit sites where they can hear the birds or a stream in a wild life habitat,' says Andy Clayden. 'Some people are put off by the formality of cemeteries and are uncomfortable with the conventions and rules involved in conventional burials. As well as catering for very individual ways of memorialising some sites have created new ways of bringing the bereaved community together at the burial ground. Examples include a Christmas carol service and candle-lit procession and a summer garden fête with live music.' The research suggests that the farmers and their families who offer land for burials are very enthusiastic about the new movement. 'Some of them live in remote upland areas and they find that by providing burial space they have a new role which requires them to 'open their door' to a new community whom they welcome onto and into their land. Many of them remain a point of contact with the bereaved,' says Andy Clayden.
Scientists studying climate change have long believed that while most of the rest of the globe has been getting steadily warmer, a large part of Antarctica - the East Antarctic Ice Sheet - has actually been getting colder.
But new research shows that for the last 50 years, much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world. In fact, the warming in West Antarctica is greater than the cooling in East Antarctica, meaning that on average the continent has gotten warmer, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Quaternary Research Center at the UW. "West Antarctica is a very different place than East Antarctica, and there is a physical barrier, the Transantarctic Mountains, that separates the two," said Steig, lead author of a paper documenting the warming published in the Jan. 22 edition of Nature.
For years it was believed that a relatively small area known as the Antarctic Peninsula was getting warmer, but that the rest of the continent - including West Antarctica, the ice sheet most susceptible to potential future collapse - was cooling. Steig noted that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, with an average elevation of about 6,000 feet above sea level, is substantially lower than East Antarctica, which has an average elevation of more than 10,000 feet. While the entire continent is essentially a desert, West Antarctica is subject to relatively warm, moist storms and receives much greater snowfall than East Antarctica.
The study found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade for the last 50 years and more than offset the cooling in East Antarctica. Co-authors of the paper are David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., a former student of Steig's; Scott Rutherford of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.; Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University; Josefino Comiso of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.
The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends. "People were calculating with their heads instead of actually doing the math," Steig said. "What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope. While other interpolations had been done previously, no one had really taken advantage of the satellite data, which provide crucial information about spatial patterns of temperature change."
Satellites calculate the surface temperature by measuring the intensity of infrared light radiated by the snowpack, and they have the advantage of covering the entire continent. However, they have only been in operation for 25 years. On the other hand, a number of Antarctic weather stations have been in place since 1957, the International Geophysical Year, but virtually all of them are within a short distance of the coast and so provide no direct information about conditions in the continent's interior. The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in areas of the continent without weather stations. "Simple explanations don't capture the complexity of climate," Steig said. "The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case. If anything it's the reverse, but it's more complex than that. Antarctica isn't warming at the same rate everywhere, and while some areas have been cooling for a long time the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer."
A major reason most of Antarctica was thought to be cooling is because of a hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer that appears during the spring months in the Southern Hemisphere's polar region. Steig noted that it is well established that the ozone hole has contributed to cooling in East Antarctica. "However, it seems to have been assumed that the ozone hole was affecting the entire continent when there wasn't any evidence to support that idea, or even any theory to support it," he said. "In any case, efforts to repair the ozone layer eventually will begin taking effect and the hole could be eliminated by the middle of this century. If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world."
6,000 Square Miles in U.S. Might Turn Emissions to Harmless Solids To slow global warming, scientists are exploring ways to pull carbon dioxide from the air and safely lock it away. Trees already do this naturally through photosynthesis; now, in a new report, geologists have mapped large rock formations in the United States that can also absorb CO2, which they say might be artificially harnessed to do the task at a vastly increased pace.
The report, by scientists at Columbia University's Earth Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey, shows 6,000 square miles of ultramafic rocks at or near the surface. Originating deep in the earth, these rocks contain minerals that react naturally with carbon dioxide to form solid minerals. Earth Institute scientists are experimenting with ways to speed this natural process, called mineral carbonation. If the technology takes off, geologic formations around the world could provide a vast sink for heat-trapping carbon dioxide released by humans.
Lead author Sam Krevor, a graduate student working through the Earth Institute's Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, says the United States' ultramafic rocks could be enough to stash more than 500 years of U.S. CO2 production. Conveniently, most of them are clustered in strips along the east and west coasts--some near major cities including New York, Baltimore and San Francisco. "We're trying to show that anyone within a reasonable distance of these rock formations could use this process to sequester as much carbon dioxide as possible," said Krevor.
So-called carbon sequestration has become a hot area of research, but so far, most work has focused on storing liquid or gaseous CO2 underground where there is room: in saline aquifers, depleted oil wells and porous coal seams that are not commercially viable. However, concern about leaks has scientists pursuing natural chemical reactions within the earth to turn the carbon back into a solid.
Ultramafic rocks generally form in earth's mantle, starting some 12 miles under the surface and extending down hundreds of miles. Bits of these rocks-peridotite, dunite, lherzholite and others-- may be squeezed to the surface when continental plates collide with oceanic plates, or, less often, when the interiors of continents thin and develop rifts. Because of their chemical makeup, when the rocks are exposed to carbon dioxide, they react to form common limestone and chalk. A map accompanying the report shows that most such rocks are found in and around coastal mountain ranges, with the greatest concentrations in California, Oregon and Washington, and along the Appalachians from New England to Alabama. Some also occur in the interior, including Montana. Worldwide, other formations are scattered across Eurasia and Australia.
Klaus Lackner, who directs the Lenfest Center, helped originate the idea of mineral sequestration in the 1990s. The U.S. survey is the first of what Lackner hopes will become a global mapping effort. "It's a really big step forward," he said. Krevor produced the map as part of his PhD. dissertation, with help from another Columbia student, Christopher Graves, and two USGS researchers, Bradley Van Gosen and Anne McCafferty. By combining more than a hundred existing maps, the researchers were able to pinpoint the areas nationally where ultramafic rocks are most abundant.
Another rock, common volcanic basalt, also reacts with CO2, and efforts are underway to map this in detail as well. The U.S. Department of Energy has been working on a basalt atlas for the northwestern United States as part of its Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership; extensive mapping in Washington, Oregon and Idaho has already been done through Idaho State University.
The major drawback to natural mineral carbonation is its slow pace: normally, it takes thousands of years for rocks to react with sizable quantities of CO2. But scientists are experimenting with ways to speed the reaction up by dissolving carbon dioxide in water and injecting it into the rock, as well as capturing heat generated by the reaction to accelerate the process. "It offers a way to permanently get rid of CO2 emissions," said Juerg Matter, a scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where a range of projects is underway.
Matter and his colleague Peter Kelemen are currently researching peridotite formations in Oman, which they say could be used to mineralize as much as 4 billion tons of CO2 a year, or about 12 percent of the world's annual output. And in Iceland, Matter is about to participate in the first major pilot study on CO2 sequestration in a basalt formation. In May, he and three other Lamont-Doherty scientists will join Reykjavik Energy and others to inject CO2-saturated water into basalt formations there. Over nine months, the rock is expected to absorb 1,600 tons of CO2 generated by a nearby geothermal power plant. Matter and another Lamont-Doherty scientist, David Goldberg,
The first ever global collaboration on climate change between major organisations and their suppliers demonstrates the need for increased supplier awareness of the regulatory, physical and general risks that climate change poses to their business. Of 634 suppliers surveyed globally by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), only 58% considered that climate change posed a risk to their operations, while one third said it posed no risk, showing there is still a lack of understanding from suppliers of the business threats from climate change.
Cadbury, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, Juniper Networks, P&G, Unilever and Vodafone are amongst the 34 member companies (listed below) using the CDP system to request major suppliers report on their carbon footprint and climate change strategies in order to maintain a resilient and sustainable supply chain. The findings from the 2008 CDP Supply Chain Report, written by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, were released today in New York. Between 40-60% of organisations' total greenhouse gas emissions** are recognised as residing outside their direct control and are found within the supply chain through activities such as processing, packaging and transportation. It is therefore critical that senior management understand climate change risks within their supply chain and how suppliers are managing those risks.
This CDP process is the first to bring together the huge purchasing power of global corporations to provide a standard reporting model for suppliers to advance carbon disclosure in the supply chain. Suppliers were invited to complete an information request examining their carbon risks and opportunities, emissions, reduction targets and plans, governance and product lifecycles. 634 suppliers responded globally, with the proportion of response rates from invited suppliers highest from North America.
Suppliers to the 34 member companies span multiple sectors and countries. The report indicated that Asian suppliers are using governance and employee incentives to drive positive action in carbon and climate change activity. Of the 77 responding suppliers based in Asia, 66% cite board level responsibility for climate change issues, above the 54% average. In addition 39% of responding Asian companies reported the use of employee incentives, which can be a key lever for change. Internal board level ownership and understanding of climate change risks and opportunities is vital to make real progress. However supplier engagement on climate change in Asia differs significantly by country, with Taiwan and Japan dominating the sample and India, China and Thailand demonstrating much lower response rates.
J.T. Wang, Chairman at Acer, a global IT corporation headquartered in Taiwan commented: "Acer has used CDP Supply Chain to identify suppliers' understanding of energy and climate change, to verify the potential climate risks in the coming carbon-constrained age and see opportunities for innovative carbon management within the supply chain. It was notable that there was a high level of engagement and interest from our Asian based suppliers who were willing to work with Acer towards becoming climate-friendly suppliers."
The respondent suppliers represented a cross section of industries, with the largest single group of respondents (31%) in Industrials. Other industries included Retail (Consumer Staples and Consumer Discretionary), Information Technology, Materials, Telecoms, Utilities, Health Care, Financials and Energy. Frances Way, Head of Supply Chain at CDP said: "Procurement teams worldwide must take a role in developing more sustainable business practices and embed the issue of climate change into an organisation's core operations. Risks posed to a company's supply chain from the impacts of climate change include extreme weather events, water scarcity, regulation and associated cost volatility. Companies must take steps to mitigate the impact of these risks to their business.
"However, with the current lack of awareness and preparedness on climate change risk there is a clear requirement for greater collaboration with suppliers to create transparency and also encourage a willingness to improve. This can only be done through long term relationships, where ideas are shared and solutions developed in partnership. Collaboration is vital if organisations are to future proof their business." Alan McGill, partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP sustainability and climate change practice commented: "The report is demonstrating that sustainability governance, planning and reporting is not a 'nice to have' - it can be the difference between whether you win or maintain your business with major corporations. "Business improvement, cost reduction, long term business risk management and reduction: these are the benefits of applying the same discipline and rigour of traditional business processes and reporting to the supply chain. This CDP report is giving senior management the tools to start the conversation within their own company and with their suppliers."
The report findings confirm that corporations do not see dealing with climate change as a one way street. The aim of member companies through this year's CDP Supply Chain Report was to raise supplier awareness around the importance of tackling the business impact of climate change. Discussion on waste or emissions reduction, product improvement, and risk management means cost and product improvement benefits can be shared by both parties. David Walker, Director of Environmental Sustainability at PepsiCo commented: "The main accomplishments achieved by participating in CDP were raising supplier awareness and driving the supplier initiatives of establishing long-term goals and strategy setting; suppliers now realise that climate change performance is important to us."
Few large businesses have yet developed an effective way of truly addressing climate change impact within their supply chains, but it is vital that they lay the groundwork now so they are prepared for future reporting and emissions reduction targets. The report provides guidance for companies on managing carbon and climate change in their supply chains, including: · Recognise that many suppliers are looking at climate change risk for the first time; start by engaging with suppliers to raise their awareness of the issue · Identify the areas where the greatest difference can be made in carbon reduction, to maximise efficiency · Clearly communicate what information is required and how it will be used · Obtain supplier support at board level · Align carbon, climate change and procurement objectives · Embed carbon and climate change into overall supply chain management processes, rather than treating it as a bolt-on to traditional procurement processes.
**The McKinsey Quarterly 2008 The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an independent not-for-profit organisation holding the largest database of corporate climate change information in the world. CDP gathers data through its annual Information Requests on behalf of 475 institutional investors with a combined asset base of $55 trillion, purchasing organisations and government bodies. Since its formation in 2000, CDP has become the gold standard for carbon disclosure methodology and process, providing primary climate change data to the global market place.
DP Supply Chain was formed in 2007 and is a collaboration of global corporations who have extended their climate change strategies beyond their direct corporate boundaries and are engaging with their suppliers via CDP's annual Information Request. More than 2,000 major corporations around the globe report their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks and opportunities posed by climate change through CDP. The Carbon Disclosure Project is a Registered Charity (no. 1122330). In the United States, CDP's sponsor liaison is Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which provides CDP with 501(c)3 charitable status.
Member Companies Acer; Boeing; BT Group; Cadbury; Carrefour; CELESC; Colgate-Palmolive; Dell; Exelon; FIJI Water; Heinz; HP; IBM; Imperial Tobacco; Johnson & Johnson; Johnson Controls; Juniper Networks; Kellogg Company; L'Oréal; Merrill Lynch & Co; National Grid; Newmont Mining; PepsiCo; Procter & Gamble; Prudential; Reckitt Benckiser; Royal Mail; SSL International; Tesco; Unilever; Vale; Vodafone.
Dual catalysts may be the key to efficiently turning carbon dioxide and water vapor into methane and other hydrocarbons using titania nanotubes and solar power, according to Penn State researchers. Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal release large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Rather than contribute to global climate change, producers could convert carbon dioxide to a wide variety of hydrocarbons, but this makes sense to do only when using solar energy.
"Recycling of carbon dioxide via conversion into a high energy-content fuel, suitable for use in the existing hydrocarbon-based energy infrastructure, is an attractive option, however the process is energy intense and useful only if a renewable energy source can be used for the purpose," the researchers note in a recent issue of Nano Letters. Craig A. Grimes, professor of electrical engineering and his team used titanium dioxide nanotubes doped with nitrogen and coated with a thin layer of both copper and platinum to convert a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapor to methane. Using outdoor, visible light, they reported a 20-times higher yield of methane than previously published attempts conducted in laboratory conditions using intense ultraviolet exposures.
The chemical conversion of water and carbon dioxide to methane is simple on paper -- one carbon dioxide molecule and two water molecules become one methane molecule and two oxygen molecules. However, for the reaction to occur, at least eight photons are required for each molecule. "Converting carbon dioxide and water to methane using photocatalysis is an appealing idea, but historically, attempts have had very low conversion rates," said Grimes who is also a member of Penn State's Materials Research Institute. "To get significant hydrocarbon reaction yields requires an efficient photocatalyst that uses the maximum energy available in sunlight."
The team, which also included Oomman K. Varghese and Maggie Paulose, Materials Research Institute research scientists and Thomas J. LaTempa, graduate student in electrical engineering, used natural sunlight to test their nanotubes in a chamber containing a mix of water vapor and carbon dioxide. They exposed the co-catalyst sensitized nanotubes to sunlight for 2.5 to 3.5 hours when the sun produced between 102 and 75 milliwatts for each square centimeter exposed. The researchers found that nanotubes annealed at 600 degrees Celsius and coated with copper yielded the highest amounts of hydrocarbons and that the same nanotubes coated with platinum actually yielded more hydrogen, while the copper coated nanotubes produced more carbon monoxide. Both hydrogen and carbon monoxide are normal intermediate steps in the process and as the building blocks of syngas, can be used to make liquid hydrocarbon fuels. When the team used a nanotube array with about half the surface coated in copper and the other half in platinum, they enhanced the hydrocarbon production and eliminated carbon monoxide. The yield for these dual catalyst nanotubes was 163 parts per million hydrocarbons an hour for each square centimeter. The yield from titania nanotubes without either copper or platinum catalysts is only about 10 parts per million.
"If we uniformly coated the surface of the nanotube arrays with copper oxide, I think we could greatly improve the yield," said Grimes. Grimes also found that lengthening the titanium dioxide tubes, which for other applications increases yield, does not improve results. "We think that distribution of the sputtered catalyst nanoparticles is at the top surface of the nanotubes and not inside and that is why increased length does not improve the reaction," says Grimes. Although all these experiments were done with nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide nanotubes, the researchers conclude that the nitrogen did not enhance the conversion of carbon dioxide to hydrocarbons. The catalysts, however, did shift the reaction from one that used only the energy in ultraviolet light to one that used other wavelengths of visible light and therefore more of the sun's energy. The researchers are now working on converting their batch reactor into a continuous flow-through design that they believe will significantly increase yields. The researchers have filed a provisional patent on this work.
Climate change is already having a detectable impact on birds across Europe, says a Durham University and RSPB-led scientific team publishing their findings to create the world's first indicator of the climate change impacts on wildlife at a continental scale. Published in the journal PLoS ONE, Durham University scientists working with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have shown a strong link between recent population changes of individual species and their projected future range changes, associated with climate change, among a number of widespread and common European birds, including the goldfinch and the lesser spotted woodpecker. By pulling together Europe-wide monitoring data, the team has compiled an indicator showing how climate change is affecting wildlife across Europe. The European Union has adopted the indicator as an official measure of the impacts of climate change on the continent's wildlife; the first indicator of its kind.
The paper and the indicator were produced by a team of scientists from the RSPB, Durham University, Cambridge University, the European Bird Census Council, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, the Czech Society for Ornithology, and Statistics Netherlands. European population data for birds was compiled by The Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS), a partnership involving the European Bird Census Council (EBCC), the RSPB, BirdLife International, and Statistics Netherlands funded by the RSPB and the European Commission Dr Stephen Willis, of Durham University, said: "The impact of climatic changes, both positive and negative, can now be summarised in a single indicator which we've called the Climatic Impact Indicator. A period of stable annual average temperatures in Europe ended in the early 1980s, and this new Indicator shows that climate change is affecting many species but in different ways. Climate change is having an adverse effect on many birds, though some species are actually benefiting from the recent changes.
"Our indicator is the biodiversity equivalent of the FTSE index, only instead of summarising the changing fortunes of businesses, it summarises how biodiversity is changing due to climate change. Unlike the FTSE, which is currently at a six year low, the climate change index has been increasing each year since the mid-80s, indicating that climate is having an increasing impact on biodiversity. "Those birds we predict should fare well under climate change have been increasing since the mid-80s, and those we predict should do badly have declined over the same period. The worry is that the declining group actually consists of 75 per cent of the species we studied."
The Climate Change Indicator combines two independent strands of work; bioclimate envelope-modelling and observed populations trends in European birds, derived from the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme. When a bird's population changes in line with the projection, the indicator goes up. Species whose observed trend does not fit the projection cause the indicator to decline. The RSPB's Dr Richard Gregory said: "We hear a lot about climate change, but our paper shows that its effects are being felt right now. The results show the number of species being badly affected outnumbers the species that might benefit by three to one. Although we have only had a very small actual rise in global average temperature, it is staggering to realise how much change we are noticing in wildlife populations. If we don't take our foot off the gas now, our indicator shows there will be many much worse effects to come. We must keep global temperature rise below the two degree ceiling; anything above this will create global havoc."
The research shows that a number of species are projected to increase the populations across Europe. Of the 122 species that were surveyed, the top ten increasing species (in order) are: Sardinian warbler (P); subalpine warbler (P); bee-eater (P); cirl bunting (B); Cetti's warbler (B); hoopoe (P); golden oriole (B); goldfinch (B); great reed warbler (P); and collared dove (B). Species in this list marked with a (B) already breed regularly in the UK. Species marked with a (P) are potential colonists to the UK if they continue to respond to climatic warming in the way the models predict, and in the absence of other barriers (such as the ability to disperse and the availability of suitable habitat). Of those species surveyed the worst performers across Europe (in order) are: snipe (B); meadow pipit (B); brambling (occasional B); willow tit (B); lapwing (B); thrush nightingale; wood warbler (B); nutcracker; northern wheatear (B); and lesser spotted woodpecker (B).
Of the 122 species included (out of 526 species which nest in Europe), 30 are projected to increase their range; while the remaining 92 species are anticipated to decrease their range. Dr Gregory added: "This new work emphasises again the role played by skilled amateur birdwatchers right across Europe in advancing our understanding of the environment and the growing threat posed by climate change."
To avoid creating greenhouse gases, it makes more sense using today's technology to leave land unfarmed in conservation reserves than to plow it up for corn to make biofuel, according to a comprehensive Duke University-led study. "Converting set-asides to corn-ethanol production is an inefficient and expensive greenhouse gas mitigation policy that should not be encouraged until ethanol-production technologies improve," the study's authors reported in the March edition of the research journal Ecological Applications. Nevertheless, farmers and producers are already receiving federal subsidies to grow more corn for ethanol under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
"One of our take-home messages is that conservation programs are currently a cheaper and more efficient greenhouse gas policy for taxpayers than corn-ethanol production," said biologist Robert Jackson, the Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, who led the study.
Making ethanol from corn reduces atmospheric releases of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide because the CO2 emitted when the ethanol burns is "canceled out" by the carbon dioxide taken in by the next crop of growing plants, which use it in photosynthesis. That means equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and "fixed" into plant tissues. But the study notes that some CO2 not counterbalanced by plant carbon uptake gets released when corn is grown and processed for ethanol. Furthermore, ethanol contains only about 70 percent of gasoline's energy.
"So we actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions only 20 percent when we substitute one liter of ethanol for one liter of gasoline," said Gervasio Piñeiro, the study's first author, who is a Buenos Aires, Argentina-based scientist and postdoctoral research associate in Jackson's Duke laboratory. Also, by the researchers' accounting, the carbon benefits of using ethanol only begin to show up years after corn growing begins. "Depending on prior land use" they wrote in their report, "our analysis shows that carbon releases from the soil after planting corn for ethanol may in some cases completely offset carbon gains attributed to biofuel generation for at least 50 years."
The report said that "cellulosic" species -- such as switchgrass -- are a better option for curbing emissions than corn because they don't require annual replowing and planting. In contrast, a single planting of cellulosic species will continue growing and producing for years while trapping more carbon in the soil. "Until cellulosic ethanol production is feasible, or corn-ethanol technology improves, corn-ethanol subsidies are a poor investment economically and environmentally," Jackson added. However, the report noted that a cost-effective technology to convert cellulosics to ethanol may be years away. So the Duke team contrasted today's production practices for corn-based ethanol with what will be possible after the year 2023 for cellulosic-based ethanol.
By analyzing 142 different soil studies, the researchers found that conventional corn farming can remove 30 to 50 percent of the carbon stored in the soil. In contrast, cellulosic ethanol production entails mowing plants as they grow -- often on land that is already in conservation reserve. That, their analysis found, can ultimately increase soil carbon levels between 30 to 50 percent instead of reducing them. "It's like hay baling," Piñeiro said. "You plant it once and it stays there for 20 years. And it takes much less energy and carbon dioxide emissions to produce that than to produce corn." As part of its analysis, the Duke team calculated how corn-for-ethanol and cellulosic-for-ethanol production -- both now and in the future -- would compare with agricultural set-asides. Those comparisons were expressed in economic terms with a standard financial accounting tool called "net present value."
For now, setting aside acreage and letting it return to native vegetation was rated the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, outweighing the results of corn-ethanol production over the first 48 years. However, "once commercially available, cellulosic ethanol produced in set-aside grasslands should provide the most efficient tool for greenhouse gas reduction of any scenario we examined," the report added. The worst strategy for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is to plant corn-for-ethanol on land that was previously designated as set aside -- a practice included in current federal efforts to ramp up biofuel production, the study found. "You will lose a lot of soil carbon, which will escape into the atmosphere as CO2," said Piñeiro.
University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has developed a corn plant with enormous potential for biomass, literally. It yields corn that would make good silage, Moose said, due to a greater number of leaves and larger stalk, which could also make it a good energy crop. The gene known as Glossy 15 was originally described for its role in giving corn seedlings a waxy coating that acts like a sun screen for the young plant. Without Glossy 15, seedling leaves instead appear shiny and glossy in sunlight. Further studies have shown that the main function of Glossy15 is to slow down shoot maturation. Moose wondered what would happen if they turned up the action of this gene. "What happens is that you get bigger plants, possibly because they're more sensitive to the longer days of summer. We put a corn gene back in the corn and increased its activity. So, it makes the plant slow down and gets much bigger at the end of the season."
The ears of corn have fewer seeds compared to the normal corn plant and could be a good feed for livestock. "Although there is less grain there is more sugar in the stalks, so we know the animal can eat it and they'll probably like it." This type of corn plant may fit the grass-fed beef standard, Moose said. "The first time I did this, I thought, well, maybe the seeds just didn't get pollinated very well, so I hand pollinated these ears to make sure. I found that just like the shoot, seed development is also slower and they just don't make it all the way to the end with a plump kernel," Moose said. He explained that the energy to make the seed goes instead into the stalk and leaves. "We had been working with this gene for awhile. We thought there would be more wax on the leaves and there was. But we also got this other benefit, that it's a lot bigger."
Moose tested his hypothesis with other corn lines and the effect was the same. "We essentially can make any corn variety bigger with this gene. And it can be done in one cross and we know exactly which gene does it." He noted that if you put too much of the Glossy 15 gene in, it slows down the growth too much and the frost kills the plant before it can grow. One advantage to growing sugar corn for biomass rather than switchgrass or miscanthus is that sugar corn is an annual. Moose said that if it would attract a pest or develop a disease, farmers could rotate a different crop the next year.
Moose said that sugar corn might make a good transition crop. "We think it might take off as a livestock feed, because it's immediate," Moose said. "This would be most useful for on-farm feeding. So a farmer who has 50 steers, could grow this and use the corn as feed and sell the stalks and sugar. It could be an alternative silage, because it has a longer harvest window than regular silage." For this sugar corn plant to become commercialized, it would have to get government approval, but Moose said that this is about as safe a gene as you can get. "It's a gene that's already in the corn - all we did was to put an extra copy in that amps it up."
