The hardest thing about concrete just might be the problem of how to make the ubiquitous building material in an environmentally friendly manner. Recent laboratory results at Princeton University indicate that the challenge of making greener concrete may eventually be cracked. (more…)
This new process developed by UCLA researchers could also lower production costs
Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a more efficient way to turn methanol into useful chemicals, such as liquid fuels, and that would also reduce carbon dioxide emissions. (more…)
China, with its enormous cities and vast countryside, is a potential star in the ongoing global drama of slashing carbon emissions.
In this week’s Nature, a Michigan State University researcher and an international team of sustainability experts propose a script.
China already is a star in unleashing carbon dioxide emissions. In 2011, it accounted for a quarter of the world’s total. The problems – air pollution, squandered energy resources and economic stresses that squelch growth – also come with tremendous opportunity for China to be leader in slashing emissions. Along the way, China’s vast variety of economic and geographic circumstances offers a chance to set examples for its global neighbors. (more…)
It sounds like science fiction but a team from the University of Exeter, with support from Shell, has developed a method to make bacteria produce diesel on demand.
While the technology still faces many significant commercialisation challenges, the diesel, produced by special strains of E. coli bacteria, is almost identical to conventional diesel fuel.
This means that it does not need to be blended with petroleum products as is often required by biodiesels derived from plant oils. It also means that the diesel can be used with current supplies in existing infrastructure because engines, pipelines and tankers do not need to be modified. Biofuels with these characteristics are being termed ‘drop-ins’. (more…)
Decreasing emissions of black carbon, methane and other pollutants makes a difference
With coastal areas bracing for rising sea levels, new research indicates that cutting emissions of certain pollutants can greatly slow sea level rise this century.
Scientists found that reductions in four pollutants that cycle comparatively quickly through the atmosphere could temporarily forestall the rate of sea level rise by roughly 25 to 50 percent.
The researchers focused on emissions of four heat-trapping pollutants: methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons and black carbon. (more…)
UCLA life scientists and colleagues have produced the most comprehensive mathematical model ever devised to track the health of populations exposed to environmental change.
The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, is published Dec. 2 in the journal Science.
The team’s groundbreaking integral projection model, or IPM, unites various sub-disciplines of population biology, including population ecology, quantitative genetics, population genetics, and life-span and offspring information, allowing researchers to link many different data sources simultaneously. Scientists can now change just a single variable, like temperature, and see how that affects many factors for a population. (more…)
Washington, D.C. — It is difficult to measure accurately each nation’s contribution of carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon is extracted out of the ground as coal, gas, and oil, and these fuels are often exported to other countries where they are burned to generate the energy that is used to make products. In turn, these products may be traded to still other countries where they are consumed. A team led by Carnegie’s Steven Davis, and including Ken Caldeira, tracked and quantified this supply chain of global carbon dioxide emissions. Their work will be published online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of October 17. (more…)
Geophysical Sciences Professor David Archer polled the 200 students in one of his Global Warming classes about whether they believed that humans have had an impact on climate. Approximately 90 percent of the students responded “yes,” reflecting the lessons of climate simulations that Archer had shared earlier with the students.
Those computer simulations are able to reproduce the trend toward rising temperatures, but only when they include data on rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Simulations that omit the CO2 data do not accurately reproduce the changes. Archer says the link helps reveal carbon dioxide emissions as “the smoking gun” behind global warming and climate change. (more…)
