EAST LANSING, Mich. — Many people are willing to pay a premium for ethanol, but not enough to justify the government mandate for the corn-based fuel, a Michigan State University economist argues.
Soren Anderson studied the demand for ethanol, or E85, in the United States. He found that when ethanol prices rose 10 cents per gallon, demand for ethanol fell only 12 percent to 16 percent on average. (more…)
The 168 rectangular panels on the roof of the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatic Center will generate enough power to keep the lights on and enough thermal energy to heat the million-gallon pool. The center, due to open April 13, will be Rhode Island’s first hybrid (heat and power) solar installation — also the largest in the nation and the first on a college campus.
Brown is diving into solar energy. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – More than extreme weather events and the work of scientists, it is national political leaders who influence how much Americans worry about the threat of climate change, new research finds.
In a study of public opinion from 2002 to 2010, researchers found that public belief that climate change was a threat peaked in 2006-2007 when Democrats and Republicans in Congress showed the most agreement on the issue. (more…)
*In “The Great Dying” 250 million years ago, the end came slowly*
The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report.
It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events.
Thomas Algeo, a geologist at the University of Cincinnati, and 13 colleagues have produced a high-resolution look at the geology of a Permian-Triassic boundary section on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. (more…)
New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published in Nature Geoscience
The team set out to identify the effects that the first land plants had on the climate during the Ordovician Period, which ended 444 million years ago. During this period the climate gradually cooled, leading to a series of ‘ice ages’. This global cooling was caused by a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon, which this research now suggests was triggered by the arrival of plants. (more…)
Offshore wind farms could generate more than enough energy to meet Maryland’s annual electricity consumption, according to a just-published study by researchers at the University of Delaware. The potential power output is nearly double current energy demands for the state, even when taking into account various limitations on where to place equipment in the Atlantic.
“Installing wind turbines far off the coast of Maryland would help the state generate large quantities of electricity while creating local jobs,” said study co-author Willett Kempton, professor of marine policy in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE). “Producing more electricity this way also displaces fossil fuel generation, thus reducing harmful carbon dioxide emissions and improving air quality.” (more…)
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Precipitous declines in formerly common mammals in Everglades National Park have been linked to the presence of invasive Burmese pythons, according to a study published on Jan. 30, 2012, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study, the first to document the ecological impacts of this invasive species, strongly supports that animal communities in this 1.5-million-acre park have been markedly altered by the introduction of pythons within 11 years of their establishment as an invasive species. Mid-sized mammals are the most dramatically affected. (more…)
A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth’s Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century. (more…)
