Shale-gas drilling involving hydraulic fracturing has been increasingly used in the United States and Canada.
A new documentary called Gasland focuses on the impact that the natural gas extraction process has on communities and the environment.
Greenpeace International and the European Renewable Energy Council have produced a report titled: "Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable World Energy Outlook" which provides a detailed blueprint for cutting carbon emissions while achieving economic growth by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency. Acopy of the full 212-page report is here; a 16-page summary is here.
Under the Energy [R]evolution scenario, global CO2 emissions would peak in 2015 and drop afterwards. Compared with 1990 CO2 emissions would be more than 80% lower by 2050. The report says that by 2050 around 95% of electricity could be produced by renewable energy.
The report also says that this phase-out of fossil fuels offers substantial additional benefits such as energy security, independence from world market fuel prices as well as the creation of millions of new green jobs.
By 2015 global power supply sector jobs in the Energy [R]evolution scenario are estimated to reach about 11.1 million, 3.1 million more than in the business-as-usual Reference scenario. By 2020 over 6.5 million jobs in the renewables sector would be created due a much faster uptake of renewables, three-times more than today.
The report finds that this can be achieved with proven technologies by adhering to five key principles:
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As disastrous as the Gulf oil spill is, it is dwarfed others aound the world.
The Guardian, for example, has an article about Nigeria where, they say, more oil is spilled every year than has been lost in the Gulf spill - and it’s been happening for 50 years!
Just last month, a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland.
Life expectancy in rural communities in the Niger Delta, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution. "If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."
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A traveling-wave reactor is a kind of nuclear reactor that can convert fertile material into nuclear fuel as it runs. Travelling wave reactors differ from other kinds of reactors in their ability to use little or no enriched uranium; instead they burn fuel made from depleted uranium, spent fuel removed from light-water reactors, natural uranium, thorium, or some combination of these materials.
They are called "travelling wave" because fission does not take place in the entire reactor core but in a localized zone that advances through the core over time.
Unlike other reactors, travelling wave reactors can be fueled at the time of construction with enough depleted uranium to produce full power for 60 years or more. Depleted uranium, which is produced as a waste byproduct of the enrichment process, is widely available as a feedstock. Stockpiles in the United States alone currently contain approximately 700,000 tonnes of depleted uranium. It has been estimated that these stockpiles represent an energy resource equivalent to $100 trillion worth of electricity.
No traveling wave reactor has yet been constructed but, in 2006, TerraPower LLC, a company whose principal owner is Bill Gates, was established to model and commercialize a practical travelling wave reactor. TerraPower has developed designs for low- to medium-power (300 megawatt) and large power (1000 megawatt) reactors.
A new study on the likely effect of climate change on tropical cyclones, published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States, predicts slightly fewer but much more destructive cyclones.
John McBride, principal research scientist for the Bureau of Meteorology says one of the most consistent findings is that the southern hemisphere is likely to see a drop in the number of cyclones each year. Australia is likely to see nine cyclones every year instead of the current ten, which will not be very noticeable.
However, the intensify of the cyclones will increase by about 10 percent. In other words, there will be a 10 percent increase in the maximum wind speed. This will make a significant difference because the destructive power of a cyclone is exponentially proportional to its wind speed.
Darwin after Cyclone Tracy
(Image: Billbee via Wikimedia)
(From sources including the ABC)
In an interview with Time magazine, Christophe de Margerie, CEO of the French oil giant Total, has commented that "what will happen very soon is that oil supplies will not cover demand. That won’t mean there is no oil. There are oil reserves, but you will need to invest billions and billions to get it."
In 2007, Mr de Margerie, told a London conference of oil executives that the industry would be unlikely to be able to produce more than 100 million barrels of oil a day and would not be able to produce the 120 million barrels a day which the International Energy Agency says will be needed by 2030. Mr de Margerie now says that producing even 90 millioin barrels a day is "optimistic".
Even present levels of production require the company to operate in difficult conditioins. For example, Total’s operations in Burma and on the Canadian tar sands and its plans to begin gas production in Iran have sparked strong protest. Last year the company opened a gas pipeline in Yemen. Total employees in Yemen can’t leave the capital and travel with armed escorts.
An analysis by atmospheric scientists at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, has shown that, in the Arctic, aircraft vapour trails have caused 15–20% of surface warming.
Globally, commercial aircraft vapour trails have been responsible for 4–8% of surface warming since records began in 1850 - equivalent to a temperature increase of 0.03–0.06°C.
Previously, it had been assumed that the impact of aircraft emissions was the same everywhere. The new analysis, led by Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, reveals that aircraft emissions increase the fraction of cirrus clouds where vapour trails are most abundant but, in other locations, the main effect is to decrease temperatures in the lower atmosphere, thereby reducing relative humidy and reducing the fraction of cirrus clouds.
Black carbon emission from aircraft also play an important role in determining whether cirrus cloud formation occurs. The researchers concluded that, If black-carbon emissions from aircraft could be reduced 20-fold, the warming resulting from vapour trails would be halted and a slight cooling would occur.
