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POPSBiofuels Breakthrough: Making Fuel From Air With Engineered Microbes Although the process sounds similar to algae-produced biofuels, the Joule process is incredibly (and beneficially) different for several reasons: * Doesn’t produce biomass * No agricultural feedstock needed * Can be conducted on non-arable land * Doesn’t need fresh water * Produces fuel directly without the need for extraction or refinement Apparently Joule has discovered some unique genes inside these microbes that produce the enzymes responsible for directly making the molecules found in diesel. From there, engineering organisms to make other fuels was a simple step. At this point, production of the fuels has only been done in the lab, but Joule has plans to open a pilot plant in early 2011.
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POPSPELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail Or you could pay a fine for, you know, being alive. I had joked before about them eventually taxing you for breathing to cut down on CO2 emissions, but I never though they would really tax you for doing nothing more than being alive.
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POPSYour Babies Are Killing Our Planet!
Monday, October 26, 2009 Moonbattery in the U.K: "The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children" From the U.K. Guardian: Fewer British babies would mean a fairer planet. The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess. If Britain is to meet the government's target of an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050, we need to start reversing our rising rate of population growth immediately. And if that makes sense, why not start cutting population everywhere? Are condoms not the greenest technology of all? Actually, if you ask a true ghoul, it would be abortion, not condoms. In fact, scratch abortion, just cull all humans without discriminating based on anything other than productivity
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POPSStockholm Syndrome: Swedes Held Hostage to CO2 Terrorism Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can no longer be called organic. Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager of climate issues for KRAV. For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.
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POPSClimate 'Debt' Transfers Billions To Developing Countries But as much as anything else, the Copenhagen treaty calls for the payment by rich countries of what can probably best be described as climate reparations. It would be "impossible to craft and draft" a detailed plan to effectively combat climate change in time for December. "That is not possible. But it is also not necessary," Mr. De Boer said. "I think what Copenhagen has to achieve is a basic political understanding." "By 2020," the treaty insists "the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be at least US$67-billion in the range of US$70-to US$140-billion" every year. If Ottawa signs on to Copenhagen, the size of our resource-based export economy means Canada may pay more dearly for the UN's latest climate-change arrangement than almost any other country on the planet. And in the end, because it may only shift carbon-intensive production from cleaner countries to less-efficient ones, the entire exercise may do very little . . .
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POPS Blaming the Poor
A paper published yesterday in the journal Environment and Urbanization shows that the places where population has been growing fastest are those in which carbon dioxide has been growing most slowly, and vice versa. Between 1980 and 2005, for instance, sub-Saharan Africa produced 18.5% of the world's population growth and just 2.4% of the growth in CO2. North America turned out only 4% of the extra people, but 14% of the extra emissions. Sixty-three percent of the world's population growth happened in places with very low emissions. Even this does not capture it. The paper points out that about one sixth of the world's population is so poor that it produces no significant emissions at all. This is also the group whose growth rate is likely to be highest. Households in India earning less than 3,000 rupees (£40) a month use a fifth of the electricity per head and one seventh of the transport fuel of households earning 30,000 rupees or more. Street sleepers use almost nothing. Those wh
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POPSObama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty, Claims British Lord How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize ; of course he’ll sign it. More at source, well worth reading as it affects us all.
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POPSCool Websites and Tools [October 11] BreathingEarth – Real-time simulation tool that shows stats like CO2 emissions, birth and death rates, and CO2 emitted per person. The stats are given both for each country and worldwide. All the data comes from reputable sources like CIA World Factbook and United Nations Statistics Division. Read more: BreathingEarth – CO2 Emissions, Birth & Death Rates by Country
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POPSZunder im Bioenergiedorf Rai-Breitenbach - Öko-Leitbild oder Reinfall?
www.BioDirekt.de >Mit dem Kraftwerk will Rai-Breitenbach autark von anderen Energieträgern werden. Das Dorf ist damit das erste Bioenergie-Dorf Hessens. Rund 1.300 Tonnen CO2-Emissionen sollen jährlich gespart werden. Außerdem rechnet die Genossenschaft damit, dass ihre Mitglieder bis zu 30 Prozent weniger Heizkosten haben.< Immer wenn der Mund zu voll genommen wird, droht das Hirn dahinter zu verschwinden. Das scheint nun, leider, auch für Rai-Breitenbach zu gelten. Ein schon letzte Woche im Odenwälder Echo erschienener Bericht von Birgit Reuther nimmt dem Projekt seinen Zauber - und dies schon im Untertitel: “Anlage bringt nur 30 Prozent ihrer Leistung - Genossen befürchten Finanzierungsprobleme“ Im Detail heißt es dann: >Die Anlage zur Holzvergasung, ein zentraler Kraftwerk-Bestandteil zur Strom- und Wärmegewinnung, erbringt seit etwa einem Jahr nur rund 30 Prozent ihrer ursprünglich kalkulierten und zur Finanzierung erforderlichen Leistung. So wur
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POPSAmerica’s First Zero Carbon Mass Transit Shuttle Compared to diesel or CNG buses, their buses have low maintenance costs, low operation costs, zero tailpipe emissions, and can reach a zero carbon footprint if powered by renewable energy sources. There will be a presentation/demonstration of the technology at American University in D.C. on Wednesday, October 21. They will be showcasing the following: - The 15-foot minibus showcased will be the first electric vehicle in the country powered completely by ultracapacitors. - Two dozen full-size ultracapacitor buses have been in commercial operation in Shanghai, China for the past three years. - The ultracapacitor vehicle demonstration is a combined effort of American University, Sinautec Automobile Technologies, The Stella Group, and Shanghai Aowei Technologies Corp.
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POPSStaff Who Emit Over CO2 Limit Have Pay Docked The maximum that an employee can earn or be fined has been capped at 100, but is likely to rise once staff have grown accustomed to the idea. WSP, the global engineering consultancy, has been conducting the rationing scheme among 80 of its British employees for almost two years. In the first year the overall carbon footprint of participants fell by 10 per cent. The company is discussing its scheme with several FTSE 100 companies. Related Links Passengers face new tax to halt rise in air travel Storing CO2 could be Britain’s next boom industry The idea of personal quotas for carbon emissions is being advocated by the thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research. Everyone would be given a number of free “credits”, to buy gas and electricity for their homes, fuel for cars and plane tickets for holidays. Those who did not use all their credits could sell the excess to people who used more fossil fuels.Those who exceed their ration pay a fine for every . . .
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