CO2-Eating Algae Streetlight!

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absorption, algae, algae streetlights, biochemistry, carbon dioxide, CO2, environment, Environmentally-friendly, France, inventions, Pierre Calleja, pioneer, Shamengo, streetlamps, streetlights

French biochemist and Shamengo pioneer Pierre Calleja has invented this impressive streetlight that is powered by algae which absorbs CO2 from the air. This one takes out 1 ton (!) of CO2 per year. This is as much CO2 as as a tree absorbs on average during its entire life!

 

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Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands

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air pollution, Alberta, Atmosphere, bitumen, Canada, Canadian Tar Sands, carbon dioxide, China, climate change, coal, destruction, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, EU, European Union, exports, forests, GOP, increase, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, Koch Brothers, lobbyists, oil, Oxbow Carbon, Oxbow Corporation, Petcoke, PetKoch, Petroleum Coke, Republicans, Super-PACS, tar sands oil, U.S, U.S. State Department, United States

The Canadian tar sands have been called the “most environmentally destructive project on earth”, with good reason. Extracting tar sands bitumen from under the boreal forests of Alberta, Canada requires huge amounts of energy and water. It has cleared vast tracts of forest, left scars on the land that are visible from space and threatened the health and livelihoods of indigenous First Nations communities across the region.

It is a well established fact that full exploitation of the tar sands is a grave threat to the climate. Emissions from tar sands extraction and upgrading are between 3.2 and 4.5 times higher than the equivalent emissions from conventional oil produced in North America.On a lifecycle basis, the average gallon of tar sands bitumen derived fuel has between 14 and 37 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the average gallon of fuel from conventional oil.

But as bad as these impacts already are, existing analyses of the impacts of tar sands fail to account for a byproduct of the process that is a major source of climate change causing carbon emissions: petroleum coke – known as petcoke. Petcoke is the coal hiding in North America’s tar sands oil boom.

Petcoke is like coal, but dirtier. Petcoke looks and acts like coal, but it has even higher carbon emissions than already carbon-intensive coal.

• On a per-unit of energy basis petcoke emits 5 to 10 percent more carbon dioxide than coal.
• A ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal.
• The proven tar sands reserves of Canada will yield roughly 5 billion tons of petcoke – enough to fully fuel 111 U.S. coal plants to 2050.
• Because it is considered a refinery byproduct, petcoke emissions are not included in most assessments of the climate impact of tar sands or conventional oil production and consumption. Thus the climate impact of oil production is being consistently undercounted.

Petcoke in the tar sands is turning American refineries into coal factories.

• There is 24 percent more CO2 embedded in a barrel of tar sands bitumen than in a barrel of light oil.
• 15 to 30 percent of a barrel of tar sands bitumen can end up as petcoke, depending on the upgrading and refining process used.
• Of 134 operating U.S. refineries in 2012, 59 are equipped to produce petcoke.
• U.S. refineries produced over 61.5 million tons of petcoke in 2011 – enough to fuel 50 average U.S. coal plants each year.
• In 2011, over 60 percent of U.S petcoke production was exported.

Keystone XL will fuel five coal plants and thus emit 13% more CO2 than the U.S. State Department has previously considered.

• Nine of the refineries close to the southern terminus of Keystone XL have nearly 30 percent of U.S. petcoke production capacity, over 50,000 tons a day.
• The petcoke produced from the Keystone XL pipeline would fuel 5 coal plants and produce 16.6 million metric tons of CO2 each year.
• These petcoke emissions have been excluded from State Department emissions estimates for the Keystone XL pipeline.
• Including these emissions raises the total annual emissions of the pipeline by 13% above the State Department’s calculations.

Cheap petcoke helps the coal industry.

• As a refinery byproduct, petcoke is “priced to move”, selling at roughly a 25 percent discount to conventional coal.
• Rising petcoke production associated with tar sands and heavy oil production is helping to make coal fired power generation dirtier and cheaper – globally.
• From January 2011 to September 2012, the United States exported over 8.6 million tons of petcoke to China, most of which was likely burnt in coal-fired power plants.

“PetKoch”: The largest global petcoke trader in the world is Florida based Oxbow Corporation, owned by William Koch – the brother of Charles and David Koch.

• Oxbow Carbon has donated $4.25 million to GOP super PACs, making it the one of the largest corporate donors to super PACs.
• Oxbow also spent over $1.3 million on lobbyists in 2012.

To date, the impacts of petcoke on the local and global environment have not been considered by regulatory bodies in assessing the impacts of the tar sands. Petcoke’s full impacts must be considered by the European Union in its debate on the Fuel Quality Directive, by the U.S. State Department in its consideration of the climate impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline, and by Canadian, American, and European governments in tar sands policies across the board.

Increasing petcoke use is a clear result of the increasing production of tar sands bitumen. Petcoke is a seldom discussed yet highly important aspect of the full impacts of tar sands production. Factored into the equation, petcoke puts another strong nail in the coffin of any rational argument for the further exploitation of the tar sands.

Source:  http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the-tar-sands/

 

‘Dangerous Territory’: Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Milestone

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Atmosphere, carbon dioxide, climate change, climate crisis, consumers, Dangerous, environment, fossil fuels, global, Global Warming, Hawaii, History, Humans, Mauna Loa, Mauna Loa Observatory, Records, world-wide

Earth’s atmosphere is entering a new era. A mountaintop research station that has been tracking carbon dioxide for more than 50 years says the level of that gas in our air has reached a milestone: 400 parts per million.

That number is one of the clearest measures of how human beings are changing the planet. It shows how much carbon we have put into the air from burning fossil fuels — and that carbon dioxide drives global warming.

This measurement comes from Mauna Loa, Hawaii, a remote volcano where the air is largely free of local influences.

Read more here:  http://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182029983/dangerous-territory-carbon-dioxide-levels-reach-iconic-high

Study Shows: U.S. East Coast Sea Temperatures Highest In 150 Years

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2012, Atlantic Ocean, burning, carbon dioxide, climate change, CO2, destruction, East Coast, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, fossil fuels, Global Warming, Gulf of Maine, high, History, Huffington Post, Human, IPCC, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, oceans, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, record, rise, sea levels, Sea surface temperature, water temperature

NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) has reported that the U.S. east coast sea surface temperatures had the warmest year in 2012 in the past 150 years.

The researchers analyzed temperatures between Cape Hatteras, N.C. and the Gulf of Maine using satellite and ship-board measurements. They found that the average sea surface temperature reached  57.2 F (14 C) in 2012, which beat the previous highest record set in 1951.

“2012′s temperature rise also marked the largest single-year increase since records began in 1854 and one of only five times that average temperatures have jumped by more than 1.8 F (1 C),” writes the Huffington Post.

“Changes in ocean temperatures and the timing and strength of spring and fall plankton blooms could affect the biological clocks of many marine species, which spawn at specific times of the year based on environmental cues like water temperature,” Kevin Friedland, a scientist in the NEFSC Ecosystem Assessment Program, said in a press statement.

The Huffington Post shares:

Research has shown that rising ocean temperatures as a result of climate change may also pose a threat to the ocean’s single-celled phytoplankton, such as algae. They are not only the foundation of the marine food chain, Climate Central explains, but they also “consume about half of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere.”

Scientists aren’t certain of the extent to which rising temperatures will impact these organisms, or how quickly they will be able to adapt, but slowed phytoplankton growth could mean more CO2 remaining in the atmosphere.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are at their highest level in human history and continue to rise.

Increased carbon dioxide in the air — as a result of human activities like the burning of fossil fuels — also means more CO2 dissolved in the world’s oceans. 

“It’s yet another reason to be very seriously concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere now and the additional amount we continue to put out,” NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco told the Associated Press in 2012. “It is going to be a long time before we can stabilize and turn around the direction of change simply because it’s a big atmosphere and it’s a big ocean.”

As we’ve previously reported, new research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has found that the global rise in sea level is happening 60% faster than the projections by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Results show that global temperature continues to increase in very good agreement with the best estimates of the IPCC,” the authors of the new study write. “The rate of sea level rise of the past decades, on the other hand, is greater than projected by the IPCC models. This suggests that IPCC sea level projections for the future may also be biased low.”

The study’s lead author, Sefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam (Germany) Institute for Climate Impact Research shares:

It contrast to the physics of global warming itself, sea level rise is much more complex. To improve future projections it is very important to keep track of how well past projections match observational data. The new findings highlight that the IPCC is far from being alarmist, and in fact in some cases rather underestimates possible risks.

Wondering how different the two projections are? The IPCC projected that sea level rise is happening at the rate of 2mm per year, whereas the new research estimates that sea levels are rising at an average rate of 3.2mm a year. What’s more, these findings don’t even account for the ice flowing into the sea from Greenland and Antarctica.

Source:  http://www.greenerideal.com/science/0503-study-shows-u-s-east-coast-sea-temperatures-highest-in-150-years/