fossil fuel – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

How Politics Stands in the Way of Real Energy Solutions

By Guest PostSeptember 25, 2017Economy, Environment, Politicsanti pipeline activism, dakota access, david spence, energy policy, energy solutions, fossil fuel, general electric, harmful spills, keystone, pipeline project, Politics

– By David Spence, Professor of Business, Government and Society; Professor of Law

In energy policy, political polarization often gets in the way of commonsense solutions to problems.

General Electric recently announced a technological advance that would allow pipeline companies to use drone-mounted cameras to inspect their lines for corrosion and leaks. This is the kind of development that could, with the right regulatory support, make huge strides toward preventing costly and harmful spills and solving other important problems afflicting America’s aging pipeline infrastructure. (more…)

Burning remaining fossil fuel could cause 60-meter sea level rise

By Guest PostNovember 16, 2015EnvironmentAntarctica, CO2, east antarctic, fossil fuel, ice sheet, ken caldeira, ricarda winkelmann, sea-level rise

Washington, DC—New work from an international team including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira demonstrates that the planet’s remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt nearly all of Antarctica if burned, leading to a 50- or 60-meter (160- to 200-foot) rise in sea level. Because so many major cities are at or near sea level, this would put many highly populated areas where more than a billion people live under water, including New York City and Washington, DC. It is published in Science Advances. (more…)

Creating fuel from sunlight

By Guest PostOctober 29, 2013Environment, Sciencecarbon dioxide byproduct, CO2, components of syngas, creating fuel, energy mix, fossil fuel, from, jane davidson, liquid hydrocarbon fuel, methane, natural, next generation, solar power, solar simulator, sunlight, syngas, synthetic gas, tom chase, university of minnesota

Turning fossil fuel into energy is easy: You just burn it. And live with the carbon dioxide byproduct. What if we could reverse the process and turn water and carbon dioxide back into fuel?

A dream solution, but it may seem like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. (more…)

Interview with Prof. Richard Rood: ‘The Saga of Climate Change’

By BlogArenaJanuary 14, 2013Environment, Interview, Mediaclimate change, extreme heat events, fossil fuel, how climate works, projecting future climates, surface air temperature, warming of earth

Richard Rood, is a professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan. He loves discussing the intersections of weather and climate, and climate and society. One of his current projects involves studying trends in extreme heat events. Rood is a blogger at Weather Underground and teaches a class on climate change problem solving. (more…)

Geothermal Energy Keeps Turkeys Comfortable and Saves Farmers’ Money; Prototype Designed by MU Engineer

By Guest PostJanuary 3, 2013Environmentair, air quality, americans, ammonia contamination, amphibians, carbon dioxide, commercial livestock operation, cook, deep drilling, doghouse, fossil fuel, geothermal energy system, geothermal unit, greenhouse gas, habitat, humidity, migratory birds, oxygen, performance data, prototype facility, thanksgiving, turkey farms, turkeys, turkeys toasty, university of missouri, wildlife, yun sheng xu

COLUMBIA, Mo. — While Americans prepare to cook millions of turkeys for Thanksgiving, a geothermal energy system developed by a University of Missouri engineer will be keeping live turkeys toasty during the chilly autumn weather. In a prototype facility, designed by a University of Missouri engineer, environmentally and economically friendly geothermal energy is keeping turkeys comfortable during both cold and hot weather. The system is designed to reduce utility costs while improving the air quality for the birds.

“This is our first prototype of a geothermal system in a commercial livestock operation,” said Yun-Sheng Xu, associate research professor in civil and environmental engineering. “Our first set of performance data suggests that farmers could cut their heating costs in half at current propane prices. Currently, two units are installed at the test farm. Other farmers could begin installing units on their turkey farms as soon as next year, for use by next winter.” (more…)

USGS Releases U.S. Oil & Gas Reserve Growth Estimates

By Guest PostAugust 18, 2012Environment, Politicsbillion barrels, domestic oil, energy economy, fossil fuel, gas liquids, gas reserve, geologic information, ken salazar, marcia mcnutt, natural gas, obama administration, operating condition, projection, public domain, tcf, trillion cubic feet, united states, usgs, usgs assessment

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released a new estimate for potential additions to domestic oil and gas reserves from reserve growth in discovered, conventional accumulations in the United States. The USGS estimates that the mean potential undiscovered, conventional reserve additions for the United States total 32 billion barrels (bb) of oil, 291 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, and 10 bb of natural gas liquids, constituting about 10 percent of the overall U.S. oil and gas endowment.

“As part of the Obama Administration’s all-of-the-above energy strategy, we are taking aggressive steps to safely and responsibly expand domestic energy production,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “USGS’s ongoing work to identify and estimate U.S. energy supplies – and to make that information available to everyone – is fundamental to our efforts to continue to grow America’s energy economy.” (more…)

Measuring the “Other” Greenhouse Gases: Higher Than Expected Levels of Methane in California

By Guest PostJune 16, 2012Environmentanthropogenic, atmospheric lifetime, berkeley lab, black carbon, california, carb, carbon dioxide, central valley, ch4 emissions, climate pollutant, CO2, coal mines, decomposition, environment policy, fossil fuel, fraction, global warming, greenhouse gas, halocarbon gases, landfills, livestock ranches, man made source, map, marc l fischer, methane, methane emissions, methane signals, natural sources, nitrous oxide, noaa, organic matter, refrigerants, sacramento, seongeun jeong, soot, sound energy, spatial, temporal resolution, united states, walnut grove

Berkeley Lab scientists develop new method for evaluating short-lived pollutants.

New research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found that levels of methane—a potent greenhouse gas emitted from many man-made sources, such as coal mines, landfills and livestock ranches—are at least one-and-a-half times higher in California than previously estimated.

Working with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Berkeley Lab scientists Marc L. Fischer and Seongeun Jeong combined highly accurate methane measurements from a tower with model predictions of expected methane signals to revise estimated methane emissions from central California. They found that annually averaged methane emissions in California were 1.5 to 1.8 times greater than previous estimates, depending on the spatial distribution of the methane emissions. (more…)

Thawing Permafrost 50 Million Years Ago Led To Warm Global Events, Says New Study

By Guest PostApril 7, 2012EnvironmentAntarctica, arctic permafrost, carbon, climate, climatic threshold, CO2, earth, eccentric orbits, ecosystem, Environment, floor sediment, fossil fuel, frozen-soil, greenhouse gas levels, italy, kevin schaefer, methane gas, ocean, orbit, organic matter, paleocene eocene, permafrost, permafrost thaw, petm, rob deconto, soil, source, thermal maximum, university of urbino

A new study led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and involving the University of Colorado Boulder proposes a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events on Earth about 50 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, as well as a sequence of similar, smaller warming events afterward.

“The standard hypothesis has been that the source of carbon was in the ocean in the form of frozen methane gas in ocean-floor sediments,” said lead study author Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “We are instead ascribing the carbon source to the continents in polar latitudes where permafrost can store massive amounts of carbon that can be released as CO2 when the permafrost thaws.” (more…)

Tag Archives: fossil fuel