Science/Tech

Nuclear Energy Steals Billions from Other Technologies

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, global warming, News, Science/Tech, sustainability , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy*

Costs of nuclear skyrocket while costs of renewables falling quickly say energy experts

BERLIN, Jul 31, 2009 (IPS)

Why is nuclear energy back on the table?

One reason is a powerful U.S. lobby where 14 energy companies spent 48 million dollars in 2007 alone to convince American politicians to give the industry huge loan guarantees because they cannot get financing anywhere else, says Ellen Vancko, a nuclear energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S.-based non governmental organisation (NGO).

This lavish lobbying effort by the energy and nuclear power sector has been ongoing since the mid-1990s, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a U.S. NGO and now totals at least 953 million dollars.

Even more has been spent to convince the public that nuclear is one of the keys to energy security so that there is significant public support for new reactors, a Gallup Environment Poll reported this year.

“There are lots of senators and members of congress talking about nuclear as a clean, renewable energy resource,” Vancko says.

The other reason is the French. Continue reading →

Europe’s Green Energy Portfolio Up in Smoke?

Stephen 1 Must Read, arctic, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, global warming, Science/Tech , , , , , , ,

…the truth about the “big lie” that burning wood for energy is carbon- neutral

By Stephen Leahy

BERLIN, Jun 7, 2010 (IPS)

Europe seems hell-bent on burning the world’s forests for bioenergy, even as it offers billions of euros to save them, critics say.

The dirty secret of Europe’s vaunted green energy revolution is the fact that 68.5 percent of its renewable energy portfolio comes from biofuels and burning wood for energy, according to a report released in Brussels last week. Modern technologies like wind and solar get all the press, but burning wood is well, prehistoric.

“We estimate at least 27 million tonnes of wood biomass will be needed annually to supply planned power stations in the UK (United Kingdom) alone,” said Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch, a British NGO focused on bioenergy issues.

In a story broken by IPS last fall, at least one million hectares of forest annually will be needed to feed the dozens of planned wood-fired power plants in Britain alone. The Netherlands is already burning one million tonnes of wood. Germany is up 23 million cubic meters (16.5 million tonnes) – mostly imported – and plans to double this figure by 2020, said the report co-published with the Global Justice Ecology Project, “Wood Based Bioenergy: The Green Lie”.

“It’s getting pretty scary,” Ernsting, a report co-author, told IPS. Continue reading →

Burning Oil, Gasoline, Coal Causes Heart Attacks – American Heart Association

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, global warming, Health, News, Science/Tech , , ,

Researchers have long proven emissions from cars, trucks, coal plants reduce air quality and affect our health. Yet another study documents the serious health impacts on all of us, specifically our heart and arteries.

Reuters take:

The evidence is stronger than ever that pollution from industry, traffic and power generation causes strokes and heart attacks, and people should avoid breathing in smog, the American Heart Association said on Monday. Continue reading →

Tsunami of E-Waste Could Swamp Developing Countries

Stephen 1 Must Read, Energy, News, Pollution and Toxics, Science/Tech

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Feb 22, 2010

(IPS)

The mighty mountains of hazardous electronic waste are growing by about 40 million tonnes a year globally. In China, India and South Africa, those mountains are expected to grow 200 to 500 percent in the next decade, a new report warns.

And that’s just from domestic sales of TVs, computers and cell phones. The figure doesn’t include millions of tonnes of e-waste that is exported, mostly illegally, into these countries.

Sales of electronic consumer goods are skyrocketing in emerging economies, but that is not matched by capabilities to properly collect and recycle such products, which contain both toxic and valuable materials, says the United Nations report, “Recycling – from E-Waste to Resources“.

It was released in Bali, Indonesia Monday at a meeting of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.

E-waste from discarded mobile phones will be about seven times higher than 2007 levels in China by 2020. In India, the mobile phone e-waste mountain will be 18 times higher. At the same time, e-waste from televisions will be 1.5 to 2.0 times higher in China and India, while in India e-waste from discarded refrigerators will double or triple, the landmark report states. Continue reading →

Time Running Out on Vows to Act on Climate Scientists Warn

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, Forests, global warming, News, Science/Tech , ,

Alleyway, RLeahy 2007
Alleyway, RLeahy 2007

By Stephen Leahy

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sep 24 (IPS)

Promises are easy to make.

But promises by world leaders will not halt the heat-trapping carbon emissions that are dialing-up global temperatures and altering the climate, say critics and climate researchers meeting in this U.S. Midwestern city.

As evidenced at the U.N. leader’s summit on climate change in New York Tuesday, the world’s big economies are refusing to commit to actions that will prevent this and future generations from inheriting a hostile climate no other humans have ever faced.

“Do we have the social and political will to deal with a problem that we will only see partially in our lifetimes?” wonders Don McConnell, president of Battelle Energy Technology, the world’s largest non-profit research centre.

“What most don’t realise is that the biggest impact from climate change will be shifts in precipitation, not temperature increase,” McConnell told IPS at the McCormick Energy Solutions Conference at Ohio State University this week.

Continue reading →

Solar Dreams – To Fly Around the World – Without Fuel By 2012

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, News, Science/Tech , , , ,

solar impulse3

By Stephen Leahy*

DÜBENDORF, Switzerland, Sep 16 (Tierramérica)

A solar-powered aircraft will take flight next month from Switzerland with hopes ultimately to circle the Earth in 2012, without fuel, and stopping every five days only to change pilots.

“I’m intrigued by the vision of perpetual flight,” mechanical engineer Andre Borschberg, chief executive of the 100-million-dollar Solar Impulse project, told Tierramérica.

Designed to use only energy from the sun during the day and run on sun-charged batteries at night, it could stay aloft perpetually, like a giant version of the thin-winged Arctic tern that migrates annually from the Antarctic to the Arctic, non-stop.

“The big lesson of the Wright brothers is that if you don’t try you never succeed,” Borschberg told Tierramérica in the Dübendorf Airfield hanger outside of Zurich, where the first prototype was being assembled for a test flight in October or November.

solar impulse2The U.S. inventors Orville and Wilber Wright are credited with the first airplane flight in 1903. “They never dreamed that a plane could cross the Atlantic Ocean, and yet less than 25 years later (in 1927) Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris,” Borschberg said.

“It is our hope that the Solar Impulse will be a symbol to the world and create awareness about our own energy use,” he added.

The Solar Impulse HB-SIA prototype plane is essentially a 64-metre long thin wing with four small propellers and narrow pilot pod and tail attached underneath.

Sitting in the airport hangar, even with its inner workings exposed, it doesn’t look like much more than a big paper glider – not much for 100 million dollars. Continue reading →

Ethanol and Biofuels: Almost Everything You Need to Know

Stephen 1 Must Read, Africa, Agriculture/Food, Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, developing world, ECOLOGY, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Food, Forests, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, News, Science/Tech, sustainability, water, WILDLIFE , , , , , , , , , ,

“The U.S. has led the fight to stem global hunger, now we are creating hunger,” said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute.

Series of the latest articles that provide almost everything you need to know about why ethanol and biofuels will not reduce global warming but simply drive up fuel and food costs.

maize - mexicoEthanol Worse Than Gasoline

Only Green Part of Most Biofuels is the Wealth (Subsidies) They Generate

Ethanol: The Great Big Green Fraud

International Enviro Standards Needed for Biofuels

Six Experts On Why Ethanol is a Dumb Idea

Food & Fuel: Can Sorghum Be The New Magic Bullet Biofuel??

Biofuels: Another Good Reason to Hate American Policy

(Cellulosic) Greenest Ethanol Still Unproven

A Green Lining in Market Meltdown?

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Science/Tech, sustainability , ,

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 17 (IPS) – Clean and green technologies may end up a big winner in the current global financial crisis, say investment professionals.

Billions of dollars in new investments have been made in clean/green tech such as renewable energy and energy efficiency in recent years. And, despite fears of a major recession in the U.S., nearly all investment professionals and institutions reported plans to introduce new investment opportunities before the end of 2009, according a new survey of the 500-member Social Investment Forum (SIF), an association for socially and environmentally responsible investment firms.

“In the last two years the growth in the green economy has been tremendous,” said Jack Robinson, president of Winslow Management Company in Boston.

“But the huge win for the green economy is the U.S. bank bailout programme,” Robinson, a green investment expert, told IPS.

It turns out the near collapse of the U.S. financial system has a silver lining for the long-cash-starved alternative energy sector. Continue reading →

Flying Blind Into Future Hurricane Seasons

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Hurricane, Science/Tech

“…New Orleans is at the same risk as it was before Katrina.”
– Stephen Leatherman, director of the International Hurricane Research Center

In just two years from now 40 percent of the current weather and science satellites will be out of service. NASA budget cuts means few if any replacements are on the way. Billions of dollars will go into manned space efforts instead.

“The [George W.] Bush administration has decided going to Mars and the International Space Station is more important,” said Judith Curry, chair of climate and remote sensing at Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

“Earth sciences has taken a huge hit at NASA. That’s not a good thing for those of us living on Planet Earth,” Curry said.

“This is a very serious issue.”

For more see:

Flying Blind Into a Monster Hurricane Season

Related stories:

Steve’s Hurricane Handbook 2007

Hurricane Katrina Only Cat 1/2 When It Hit New Orleans – NOAA

Failure on Global Warming “Un-American”

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News, Science/Tech , ,

By Stephen Leahy

KINGSTON, Ontario, Jun 25 (IPS) – North America’s abject failure to meet the challenge of climate change has been “un-American”, environmentalist and scientist David Suzuki told delegates Tuesday at the World Wind Energy Conference, the first ever in the region.

“We’re facing an ecological crisis, a crisis far, far worse than Pearl Harbour,” Suzuki said.

Twenty years ago this week, one of the United States’ leading scientists warned Congress of the imminent danger of climate change and said that waiting decades to take action was too risky. Now James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has published new research indicating that greenhouse gas concentrations have pushed the climate near a dangerous tipping point that will unleash far-reaching changes in the atmosphere and oceans that could take millennia to reverse.

100% Renewable Energy Can Power Nations experts say

To prevent a climate crisis, Hansen calls for deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, beginning almost immediately, including a phase out of coal-fired power plants by 2030. Continue reading →