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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…)

Mapping Grasslands for Biofuel Potential

By Guest PostMarch 31, 2012Environmentalternative, america, biofuel crop, cell wall, cellulosic, energy, environmental impact, fertilizer, fossil fuel, grassland, irrigation water, marcia mcnutt, miscanthus, municipal wastes, nebraska, non food crop, north american, overgrazing, plant, platte river basin, prairie, switchgrass, tallgrass, united states, usgs, woody biomass

USGS scientists have developed a new method for mapping grasslands that demonstrate high potential for growing biofuel crops with relatively little energy input and environmental impact.

The pioneering investigation used remote sensing data from satellites to identify detailed areas of the Greater Platte River Basin (most of Nebraska, parts of adjacent states) that are best suited for producing cellulosic (from the cell walls of plants) biofuel derived from hardy switchgrass, a native plant that grows wild or is easily cultivated. (more…)

From Cancer Research to Energy Storage, Berkeley Lab Scientist Takes on Big Challenges

By Guest PostFebruary 3, 2012Scienceclean energy, CO2, energy, Environment, fossil fuel, hydrogen storage system, India, intel corporation, liquefied hydrogen, magnesium metal, metal hydride, molecular foundry, nanoparticle, optical spectroscopy, phase transition, plasmonic structures, rising star, rizia bardhan, Science, volumetric density

*Rizia Bardhan, a postdoc at the Molecular Foundry, selected to Forbes’ ’30 under 30′ list*

On a typical day, Rizia Bardhan walks through the doors of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Molecular Foundry and immerses herself in the tricky business of tweaking optical spectroscopy equipment to study phase transitions in metal hydrides.

It’s fair to say that what she does is difficult to grasp. Why she does it is easy: “I want to help solve big problems. That’s why I’m here,” she says. (more…)

Commentary in Nature: Can Economy Bear What Oil Prices Have in Store?

By Guest PostJanuary 27, 2012Economy, Environmentfossil fuel, fracking, global economy, oil prices, shale gas, shale gas wells

Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy.

That’s the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in the current issue of the journal Nature (Jan. 26) that the economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels. (more…)

Researchers Find Unprecedented, Man-Made Trends in Oceans Acidity

By Guest PostJanuary 26, 2012Environment21st century, acidity, anthropogenic co2 emission, aragonite, aragonite saturation, axel timmermann, bishop museum, calcification rate, calcium carbonate, caribbean, climate, climate modeler, co2 emission, computer modeling, coral, coral reef, earth system model, ecosystem, fossil fuel, global scale, hawaiian islands, honolulu, jamstec, jhamandas watumull planetarium, last glacial maximum, level of acidity, marine ecosystem, marine organism, mollusk, observation, ocean, ocean acidification, ocean chemist, ocean condition, parts per million, ppm, saturation level, tobias friedrich, western equatorial pacific, yellow tangs

Nearly one-third of CO2 emissions due to human activities enters the world’s oceans. By reacting with seawater, CO2 increases the water’s acidity, which may significantly reduce the calcification rate of such marine organisms as corals and mollusks, resulting in the potential loss of ecosystems. The extent to which human activities have raised the surface level of acidity, however, has been difficult to detect on regional scales because it varies naturally from one season and one year to the next, and between regions, and direct observations go back only 30 years.

By combining computer modeling with observations, an international team of scientists concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions, resulting from the influence of human beings, over the last 100 to 200 years have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations. The study is published in the January 22, 2012 online issue of Nature Climate Change. (more…)

Depleted Gas Reservoirs Can Double as Geologic Carbon Storage Sites

By Guest PostJanuary 6, 2012Environmentatmosphere, australia, barry freifeld, berkeley lab, boreholes, caprock, climate change, co2 deep underground, co2 storage capacity, co2crc, coal burning power plants, daily co2 emissions, depleted gas reservoirs, depleted natural gas reservoirs, fossil fuel, gas fields, geologic carbon sequestration, geologic carbon storage sites, gigatons of capacity, global emissions, greenhouse gas, groundwater, injection, lawrence berkeley national laboratory, mitigation strategy, natural gas, naylor 1 well, otway project, permanent storage, pipeline network, rock formations, sandeep sharma, seismic and acoustic monitoring equipment, soil, Technology, tom daley, trap co2, u tube samplers, western victoria

*Berkeley Lab scientists help verify science behind geologic carbon sequestration*

A demonstration project on the southeastern tip of Australia has helped to verify that depleted natural gas reservoirs can be repurposed for geologic carbon sequestration, which is a climate change mitigation strategy that involves pumping CO₂ deep underground for permanent storage.

The project, which includes scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), also demonstrated that depleted gas fields have enough CO₂ storage capacity to make a significant contribution to reducing global emissions. (more…)

Wind energy, the next riding horse of power

By ShamsMay 17, 20081 commentEnvironmentalternative energy sources, fossil fuel, turbine, wind energy

As U.S Department of Energy (DOE) doing a feasibility study to generate 20% of power for Americans from wind energy, turbine industries can be a new lucrative market for investors. The approximate time planned is by 2030. More than 20 years at hand. The turbine market will be advancing tremendously in the coming decades. That’s a certainty.

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Biofuel, food price

By ShamsApril 29, 20082 commentsEnvironment, Technologybiofuel, ethanol, fossil fuel

Higher the biofuel production higher the food price. The relation looks like this. One thing left…….higher the biofuel, lower the dependence on fossil fuel. So what’s happening now??

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