We’re about to kill a massive, accidental experiment in reducing global warming

Studies have found that ships have a net cooling effect on the planet, despite belching out nearly a billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. That’s almost entirely because they also emit sulfur, which can scatter sunlight in the atmosphere and form or thicken clouds that reflect it away.

In effect, the shipping industry has been carrying out an unintentional experiment in climate engineering for more than a century. Global mean temperatures could be as much as 0.25 ˚C lower than they would otherwise have been, based on the mean “forcing effect” calculated by a 2009 study that pulled together other findings (see “The Growing Case for Geoengineering”). For a world struggling to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 ˚C, that’s a big helping hand.

And we’re about to take it away.

Read the MIT Technology Review story by James Temple - “We’re about to kill a massive, accidental experiment in reducing global warming.”

EU votes for outdoor ban on common insecticide over danger to bees

European Union countries have backed a proposal to ban all use outdoors of insecticides known as neonicotinoids that studies have shown can harm bees.

The move follows a number of studies linking the use
 of the insecticides to population declines in bees.

The ban, championed by environmental activists, covers the use of three active substances — imidacloprid developed by Bayer CropScience, clothianidin developed by Takeda Chemical Industries and Bayer CropScience as well as Syngenta's thiamethoxam.

Read Laura Webster’s story from ABC News - “EU votes for outdoor ban on common insecticide over danger to bees.”

Co-Optimization of Engines & Fuels: Breakthrough Research in Engine and Fuel Co-Optimization

The Energy Department today released two studies from the Co-Optimization of Engines & Fuels initiative (Co-Optima). The study, Fuel Blendstocks with the Potential to Optimize Future Gasoline Engine Performance, identifies eight representative high-octane blendstocks across five chemical groups that could be blended into gasoline for better performance. These new blendstocks, co-optimized with advanced gasoline engines, show potential to improve passenger vehicle fuel economy by 10%. The companion study, Efficiency Merit Function for Spark Ignition Engines, outlines a new mathematical equation which quantifies the fuel efficiency potential associated with different fuel properties. The goal of this research is to provide American industry with the scientific foundation needed to maximize vehicle and fuel performance and efficiency, thereby enabling increased fuel economy and more affordable transportation. For a typical American household, transportation costs are second only to housing expenses.

“Increasing the efficiency of internal combustion engines is one of the most cost-effective approaches to improving the energy efficiency of new vehicles in the near- to mid-term in conventional, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Daniel Simmons. “Researching engines and fuels as a system offers the opportunity to improve the affordability and efficiency of future gasoline engines for American families and businesses.”

Read the Science and Technology Research News story - “Co-Optimization of Engines & Fuels: Breakthrough Research in Engine and Fuel Co-Optimization.”

Mount Lyell copper mine owners aim for zero emissions at restart following million-dollar upgrade

Copper Mines of Tasmania (CMT) has an ambitious plan to make Mt Lyell on Tasmania's west coast Australia's first zero emissions mine when it reopens.

The 134-year-old mine is looking to electric vehicles,
 hydro and geothermal to reach zero emissions.

The Mount Lyell mine has been under care and maintenance since 2014 and was the site of three fatal accidents over the past 4 years.

CMT general manger Peter Walker said the company has spent $100 million since 2014 maintaining the mine and is spending a million dollars on feasibility studies investigating mine modernisation.

He is not aware any other mine in the world has reached that target, but he said is a unique opportunity because of access to Tasmania's hydro power.

Read Sally Dakis ABC News story - “Mount Lyell copper mine owners aim for zero emissions at restart following million-dollar upgrade.”

Pananoria taught, rather than the reality that is climate change



The Salon Logo.

The reality that global warming is human-induced is beyond debate.
However, America’s conservative forces as they do in Australia continue to argue otherwise.
Just recently, the Salon magazine listed and published "11 heinous lides conservatives are teaching Americca's school children"

It argued in the article that the righ had a new plan to capture the country's youth vote by taking over the public school cirriculums.
The article said: “If recent elections have taught us anything, it’s that young Americans have taken a decided turn to the left. Young voters delivered Obama the election: the under-44 set voted Obama and the over-45 set broke for Romney. The youngest voters, age 18-29, gave Obama a whopping 60 percent of their vote.
“Now Republicans have a plan to try to recapture the youngest voters out there: Take over the curriculum in public schools, replace education with a bunch of conservative propaganda, and reap the benefits of having a new generation that can’t tell reality from right-wing fantasy,” it said.

The third lie of the eleven published says:

Climate change is a massive hoax scientists have perpetuated on the public.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been hard at work pushing for laws requiring that climate change denialism be taught in schools as a legitimate scientific theory. Unfortunately, as Neela Banerjee of the L.A. Times reports, they’ve already had some serious success: “Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change.” Other states are taking the “teach the controversy” strategy that helped get creationism into biology classrooms, asking teachers to treat climate change like it’s a matter of political debate instead of a scientifically established fact.

The reality is that climate change is a fact that has overwhelming scientific consensus. In 2004, Science reviewed the 928 relavant studies on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 and found that exactly zero of them denied that climate change was a reality, and most found it had man-made causes. To claim that climate change is a “controversy” requires one to believe that there’s a massive conspiracy involving nearly all the scientists in the world. So, your kids are not only not learning the realities of climate change, they are also learning, if indirectly, to give credence to conspiracy theory paranoia.

 

Most would agree, earth on track to be 'hottest'

Many people would agree with the ABC story that declares: “Earth on track to be hottest in human history: study”.

Most of us tend to see things through the existing prism and just of late the weather has been rather hot and unseasonal.

The story, quoting a new study, says earth is on track to become the hottest it has been at any time in the past 11.3 millennia, a period spanning the history of human civilisation.

The story concludes in saying: “Other studies have concluded that human activities - not natural causes - have been responsible for the warming experienced over the past 50 years”.