The media is fond of quoting claims that the internet will soon be using more power than the airline industry, that it will consume half of all the electricity produced or that two Google searches release as much CO₂ as boiling a kettle of water.

The Google search myth arose from a Times article in January 2009 which said that "a typical search generates about 7g of CO₂. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g". Urs Hölzle, Google’s Senior Vice President Operations, posted a response saying the typical search actually releases only 0.2 grams of CO₂ - that’s 75 searches per kettle. The Times has since published a "clarification" but the original figure still gets quoted.

On the broader issue, the amazing estimates of the amount of electricity that the internet supposedly uses stem from a 1999 article in Forbes magazine revealingly titled "Dig More Coal - the PCs Are Coming". The article claimed that the internet was then accounting for 8% of all electricity use with the total used by all computers (including the internet) amounting to 13%. Highly detailed studies by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory show that he actual figures at that time were less than 1% for the internet and about 3% for all computers.
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For years, we have been warned that low-lying coral island states will be drowned by rising sea levels. Now the first analysis of the data broadly suggests the opposite - most have remained stable, while some have even grown, despite rising sea levels, over the last 60 years.

Nanumea Atoll, Tuvalu (NASA image)

Paul Kench at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Arthur Webb at the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji used historical aerial photos and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land surface of 27 Pacific islands over the last 60 years. Local sea levels have risen by 120 millimetres during that time but just four of the islands have diminished in size.

Tuvalu, which stands just 4.5 metres out of the Pacific, has been widely predicted to be one of the first islands to drown in the rising seas. Yet Arthur Webb and Paul Kench found that seven islands in one of its nine atolls have spread by more than 3 per cent on average since the 1950s. One island, Funamanu, gained 0.44 hectares, or nearly 30 per cent of its previous area. In the neighbouring Republic of Kiribati, the three major urbanised islands - Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai - have increased by 30 per cent.

The reason is that low-lying Pacific islands are made of coral debris. This is eroded from the reefs that typically circle the islands and pushed up onto the islands by winds, waves and currents. Because the corals are alive, they provide a continuous supply of material. Structures linking islands can boost growth by trapping sediment that would otherwise get lost to the ocean. For example, when hurricane Bebe hit Tuvalu in 1972 it deposited 140 hectares of debris, increasing the area of the main island by 10 per cent.
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Despite continuing difficulties getting funding for large projects, Europe’s offshore wind power generating capacity grew by 54% in 2009.

A total of 199 wind turbines, with a combined capacity of 577 megawatts, were installed at eight new offshore wind farms connected to the European grid in 2009.  

The European Wind Energy Association expects ten more European offshore wind farms to be completed in 2010, adding another 1,000 megawatts - equivalent to market growth of a further 75% compared with 2009. The turnover of the offshore wind industry was approximately €1.5 billion ($au2,3 billion) in 2009 - this is expected to double in 2010.

More than 100 gigawatts (100,000 megawatts) of projects are at various stages of planning. These could provide enough power to meet 10% of Europe’s electricity demand - and would be equivalent to about three times Australia’s total power generating capacity.

Wind Turbines off Copenhagen
(Photo by Less Salty ex Wikimedia)

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In its 2007 report, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

If this is true, three quarters of a billion people in Asia who depend on glacier melt for water supplies would suffer severe water shortages witin a generation.

In fact, the average thickness of the Himalayan glaciers is about 300 metres. The average rate of melting is between 0.6 and 0.9 metres a year. The notion that the rate of melting could increase to an average of about 12 metres per year is unrealistic.

Drang Drung Glacier
(Creative Commons via Wikimedia)

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According to scientists at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, attempting to tackle global warming by capturing carbon dioxide or switching to nuclear power will not work because a large part of the warming results from the heat produced by industrial processes rather than the greenhouse effect.

In a paper published in the International Journal of Global Warming, Bo Nordell and Bruno Gervet  have calculated the total energy emissions from the start of large-scale industrialisation in the 1880s to the modern day  They point out that net heat emissions during that time account for almost three quarters of the global warming during that period - the greenhouse effect accounts for the remaining 26%.

The implication of their findings are  that those processes which produce heat, such as burning fossil fuels and using nuclear power, would continue to cause global warming even if all of the carbon dioxide which they emit is captured. On the other hand, those sources of energy which ultimately use the sun’s heat, including wind and marine power as well as solar, do not contribute to global warming.

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The U.S. Geological Survey has reported that economically extractable coal reserves in the United States, typically estimated at some 240 years worth, could be substantially less than previously thought - perhaps only half the previously estimated reserves.

The news is consistent with the findings of a 2007 National Research Council study and is similar to other reports of overestimates of economically recoverable coal reserves in other countries.

China is the world’s largest coal producer - mining twice as much as the United States, which is the second largest producer. The Energy Watch Group has predicted that Chinese coal production will peak in 2015 and will go into a steep decline after 2020. The most optimistic estimates put Chinese peak coal production at around 2030.

The UK and Germany were once major coal producers. UK production peaked in 1913 and German production in 1958. Canadian production peaked in 1997.

Russia has large untapped reserves of coal but most of it is "dirty" brown coal in difficult locations.

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Compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs do contain mercury, which is a harmful substance - but does that mean that they worse than incandescent light bulbs?

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency:, CFLs contain an average of about 4 milligrams of mercury sealed within the glass - that’s less than one percent of the mercury in mercury thermometers, which average about 500 milligrams. The amount of mercury in CFLs is continually being reduced. The best CFL bulbs now contain as little as 1.4 milligrams.

During its 8,000 hour lifetime, a 13-watt CFL will use 104 kilowatt hours of electricity. Producing this much electricity from coal releases 1.2 milligrams of mercury. The equivalent 60-watt incandescent light bulb will use 480 kilowatt hours of electricity which releases 5.8 milligrams of mercury. That is, generating the electricity to power an incandescent light releases more mercury than is contained in a typical CFL.

Of course, the mercury in a CFL is only released if it is smashed. If it is recycled, no mercury is released; if it is sent to landfill, an average of 0.6 milligrams of mercury is released to the atmosphere.

So, the CFL is the clear winner in terms of the amount of mercury released.

But how dangerous is mercury, anyway?

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Dave Rutledge, chair of the California Institute of Technology’s Engineering and Applied Sciences Division, has produced a new calculation of the world’s coal reserves which is much lower than previous estimates.

According to Professor Rutledge’s model, the total amount of available coal, including all of the coal already mined, is only 662 billion tonnes. In contrast, the World Energy Council’s current estimate, based on government figures, is that there is 850 billion tonnes of coal still in the ground still available to be mined.

If the new figures are correct, burning all of the available coal and all other fossil fuels would increase atmospheric CO2 to 460 parts per million - just enough to raise temperatures by 2 degrees celsius. Click here to read the rest of this entry.

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A year or two ago, the fossil fuel industry was adamant that renewable energy sources could never provide baseload electric power. Although most experts now admit hat this is not the case, the claim that renewables cannot supply baseload is still sometimes made and needs to be examined.

Baseload is the minimum level of power supply that utilities provide to the grid at all times. In Australia, it is usually provided by coal-fired power stations which cannot be started or stopped quickly. Elsewhere, nuclear or other fossil fuels are used. Baseload is usually about 35 to 40% of the maximum output of the power supply system.

Peak load is the maximum amount of power, above the baseload, that needs to be supplied to meet daily and seasonal fluctuations in demand. In Australia, peak load is usually hydroelectricity which can be turned on and off quickly.

There are several renewable power sources which are capable of supplying baseload:

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According to a United Nations report, cattle are "responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together." But why are cattle so bad? And are other sources of meat equally bad? There are about 1.3 billion cattle occupying 24% of the world’s entire land area.

Cattle consume more than a third of the world’s grain. Producing one kilogram of steak requires almost 20,000 litres of water. Not eating 500 grams of steak would save more water than not showering for a year. In regard to greenhouse gases, the problem with cattle is that they are ruminants.

Ruminants regurgitate their food as cud in order to slowly break it down for digestion. This process produces methane which is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Animals which do not chew their cud may need just as much feed and water, but they do not produce anything like as much greenhouse gas.

Almost all common sources of meat, other than fish and fowl, are ruminants like cattle. The major exceptions are pigs and kangaroos. Click here to read the rest of this entry.

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