Tag Archives: environment

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A plan for carbon dioxide extraction

Cloud-strewn sky Two chaps from Columbia University have published a scheme for chemically extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by passing it through a "chemical sponge". Critics of the scheme point out that the extraction process would be powered by electricity, and that we’d be better off cutting down the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we produce rather than looking for ways to recapture them. I’m no climate scientist, so I can’t pass judgement on which is the better plan … but at least there’s evidence that the prizes like Richard Branson’s Earth Challenge get people thinking about solutions to the big problems. [FuturePundit] [Image by Ju-X]

[tags]environment, atmosphere, carbon dioxide, extraction[/tags]
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Melting northlands might mitigate some effects of climate change

There are enough bad peat puns in the article, so I’ll spare you any in the headline here.  Conventional wisdom regarding climate change dictates that as temperatures rise, the frozen lands in the north will release methane that has been locked in the ground.  Methane is regarded as being 23 times stronger than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat, so this phenomenon would likely accelerate global warming.

As bad as it may seem, it may not be quite so.  A five year study done by ecologists at Michigan State University in East Lansing has found that as the frozen peatlands thaw out, they become wetter and provide fertile ground for fast-growing water plants which will suck up carbon dioxide, thus offsetting some of the methane release.

Of course, it won’t be a one-for-one tradeoff.  And as the wetlands fill in, the water plants will be replaced by slower-growing dryland plants and trees.  These new northern forests aren’t nearly as good at reducing global warming as the tropical ones.

So there you go.  We’re still going down the tubes, just not quite as quickly as people thought before.  Well, I’m off for a drink.

(via SciTech Daily Review) (image via brewbooks)

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Climate change quick-fixes could actually make things worse

algaesea As Jamais Cascio and others have pointed out, geoengineering – large-scale technological projects aimed at averting the climate change crisis – should only be considered as last-ditch options, because they come with the risk of actually making things worse.

Take for example James "Gaia" Lovelock’s suggestion that we install hundreds of huge pipes in the ocean, with the aim of channeling nutrient-rich deep water to the surface to promote the growth of algae and (hopefully) absorb more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Lovelock himself admits that there’s a risk of the plan backfiring, but he says he’s worried enough that he thinks traditional scientific caution should be left behind. I hope he’s wrong – but even if he is, we could be doing a lot more to solve the problem than we already are. [Via BLDGBLOG] [Image by Jurvetson]

[tags]environment, ocean, geoengineering, climate change[/tags]
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The bad and good of biofuels

cornfield We’ve been hearing a lot about the potential of biofuels, particularly ethanol, as being a great (and green) answer to our global dependence of petrochemicals. Which is true, to a certain extent.

The problem being that corn ethanol, while itself a cleaner fuel, is a horrendously climate-intensive crop, the cultivation of which may cause as many (if not more) problems than it solves … which is why we’d be wise to look at the numerous other sources for the same chemical (like algae, prairie grass and fast-growing trees) which won’t cause an environmental and economic trainwreck further down the line. [Via Worldchanging]

Of course, we’ll need to do something about the enticing boondoggle subsidies that are making corn ethanol such an enticing political playing piece first. [Image by Jpeg Jedi]

[tags]environment, biofuels, economics, agriculture[/tags]
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Slideshow shows a world without us

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A World Without USOne of my favorite settings for science fiction is after the fall of Man. You know the one, where cities are deserted, weeds growing up through the streets, etc. Occasionally there are humans eking out a living, but they are no longer dominant. Yeah, that kind. Well, a book that came out recently, The World Without Us, imagines what would happen environmentally if humans just vanished from the face of the earth. I prefer humans to still be around in my stories, but this concept is fascinating.

If you scroll down on the website’s main page, you’ll find an artist’s rendition of New York between 2 days and 15,000 years after the disappearance of humanity. According to the book’s author, the subways would flood after only three days, after twenty years streets would collapse and rivers would form in the space left over.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the post-nuclear holocaust genre to pick back up.

[image from mondolithic.com]