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Archive for December, 2009
Highly conductive paper for energy-storage devices
Stanford scientists have developed featherweight, pliable batteries and supercapacitors in the form of everyday paper.
By coating a sheet of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, the scientists were able to construct a highly conductive storage device that’s both low-cost and high-performance.
(The difference between a battery and a capacitor, you ask? both hold energy to be converted to electricity, but capacitors hold it for a shorter period of time. On the other hand, they can store and discharge energy much more rapidly.)
The batteries are so strong that you can crumple them and the performance does not degrade.Led by assistant professor of materials science and engineering Yi Cui, who previously created nano-size batteries using plastics, the researchers developed a solution that is more durable than conventional batteries.
Source: Smart Planet
Green algae known as Cladophora
A new biodegradable battery made of cellulose promises to offer thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive and environmentally-friendly batteries made without metal parts.
The battery is made from green algae known as Cladophora, found along freshwater beaches around the world.
The key to the battery’s success is its large surface area. Made from algae-derived cellulose with 100 times the surface area of the cellulose found in sheets of notebook paper, the battery can manage far more conducting polymer than in previous incarnations.
That means better recharge, hold and discharge capabilities.
Source: Smart Planet
Samsø
The Danish island of Samsø has become one of the first industrialized places on Earth to qualify as completely energy self-sufficient.
The tiny island — just 30 miles long and 15 miles wide — first began its push toward sustainability in 1997. In just over a decade, Samsø erected 21 electricity-producing wind turbines and a heating system fueled by wood chip- and straw-burning furnaces accompanied by several small solar panels.
Eleven of Samsø’s turbines are onshore and ten are offshore; all generate one megawatt each. The onshore turbines produce more electricity than the island consumes — enough to offset 690,000 gallons of oil — while the offshore turbines produce enough power to handle the island’s transportation energy budget.
Source: Smart Planet
Barbara Ettinger
Award-winning environmental filmmaker Barbara Ettinger’s latest documentary is about a topic so obscure that even some COP15 attendees haven’t heard of it: ocean acidification. But it’s also a topic of critical importance that threatens human survival. The film, A Sea Change, follows Ettinger’s husband, Sven Huseby (the co-producer of the film and a retired history teacher) in his quest to discover what’s happening to the world’s oceans. He finds that global warming is just part of the problem.
Source: Smart Planet
Global warming
Despite recent fluctuations in global temperature year to year, which fueled claims of global cooling, a sustained global warming trend shows no signs of ending, according to new analysis by the World Meteorological Organization made public on Tuesday.
The decade of the 2000s is very likely the warmest decade in the modern record, dating back 150 years, according to a provisional summary of climate conditions near the end of 2009, the organization said.
The period from 2000 through 2009 has been “warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s and so on,” said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the international weather agency, speaking at a news conference at the climate talks in Copenhagen.
Source: NY Times
Copenhagen climate treaty
To advocates of action on global warming, the Copenhagen summit represents the last, best chance to slow and eventually reverse the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions before climate change begins to spin out of control. To skeptics of climate change, many of whom will attend the conference, Copenhagen is the last defense of another kind — against the growing global momentum to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, an undertaking they think could cripple the international economy. Either way, it is likely to be the most important international environmental conference in history, its importance bolstered by President Barack Obama’s decision to appear at the end of the summit (initially he had planned to arrive at the start), when the most significant discussions occur and a deal might actually be made.
1. Will the U.S. lead? The U.S. delegation to climate summits under former President George W. Bush played the spoiler. Not only were American diplomats generally opposed to building a global consensus on reducing carbon emissions, they actively seemed to enjoy gumming up the works, walking out in the middle of negotiations during the Montreal summit in 2005, for instance, and nearly torpedoing the entire process two years ago in Bali.
2. Will China and India follow? Historically, the U.S. may be the world’s biggest carbon emitter — responsible for more than a quarter of the man-made CO2 in the atmosphere — but developing nations led by China and India will be responsible for the majority of future emissions. At the same time, those nations still have low per capita emissions, and under the Kyoto Protocol, they haven’t been required to take any verifiable actions to control emissions. Until recently, they haven’t shown much interest in doing so, but that may now be changing.
3. The two-step tango. Back in 2007 on the sunny Indonesian island of Bali, negotiators worked out the “Bali road map,” a series of steps toward a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that would guarantee a new global climate treaty by the 2009 conference in Copenhagen. Well, road map or not, the international community got a bit delayed — in part due to the fact that Obama has had less than a year to turn around U.S. climate policy — and no one expects an actual treaty to be negotiated and signed in Copenhagen.
4. Seeing REDD on deforestation. The loss of tropical forests plays a major role in climate change, contributing about 15% of global greenhouse gases, according to the most recent estimate. But deforestation has an environmental impact that goes beyond climate change — tropical forests are home to a wealth of diverse species, and when the trees are lost, wildlife follows.
5. Financing adaptation. Combating climate change isn’t just about reducing carbon emissions. Global warming is coming even if we do act fast, and developing nations will bear the brunt of the impact. That’s why another leg in the global treaty will address funding to help developing nations adapt to climate change — whether that means the building of seawalls, aid for agriculture during increasing droughts or the ability to better respond to natural disasters. “We need clarity on long-term finance for developing countries,” says de Boer.
As the talks begin in Copenhagen, there’s reason for climate-change advocates to feel optimistic — for the first time world leaders will be sitting down to focus solely on global warming — and reasons to worry that everything will collapse. The one thing we know is that this summit will help decide whether the world takes on climate change, or continues risking business as usual. “This is our last chance to avoid a dangerous 2°C of warming,” says Dan Lashof, the director of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Climate Center. One way or another, now is the time to act.
Source: Time
Climate change
A landmark conference on climate change opened in Copenhagen on Monday, with grim warnings of the apocalyptic dangers for mankind if world leaders fail to agree a way to save future generations.
The impact on humanity of man-made drought, flood, storms and rising seas were spelt out at the start of the 12-day meeting, which will climax with more than 110 heads of state or government in attendance.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen warned that the world turned to Copenhagen to safeguard the generations of tomorrow.
“The world is depositing hope with you for a short while,” he said.
“For the next two weeks, Copenhagen will be Hopenhagen. By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future.”
Source: Business Report
Copenhagen climate treaty
With strong appeals for action and sharp rebukes of their critics, diplomats from around the world launched a two-week negotiating summit in Copenhagen today in hopes of producing a new agreement to curb climate change.
“The time for formal statements is over,” said the United Nations’ leading climate official, Yvo de Boer, at an opening ceremony filled with dignitaries and punctuated with a video-screen plea from children warning of dire consequences stemming from warming global temperatures. “The time for restating well-known positions is past. Copenhagen will only be a success it delivers significant and immediate action.”
Source: LA Times
- Source: LA Times
Prosperity without Growth
‘The crisis doesn’t only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so.’ — President Nicolas Sarkozy, Paris, September 2009
Is more economic growth the solution? Will it deliver prosperity and well-being for a global population projected to reach nine billion?
In this explosive book, Tim Jackson – a top sustainability adviser to the UK government – makes a compelling case against continued economic growth in developed nations.
No one denies that development is essential for poorer nations. But in the advanced economies there is mounting evidence that ever-increasing consumption adds little to human happiness and may even impede it. More urgently, it is now clear that the ecosystems that sustain our economies are collapsing under the impacts of rising consumption. Unless we can radically lower the environmental impact of economic activity – and there is no evidence to suggest that we can – we will have to devise a path to prosperity that does not rely on continued growth.
Economic heresy? Or an opportunity to improve the sources of well-being, creativity and lasting prosperity that lie outside the realm of the market?
Tim Jackson provides a credible vision of how human society can flourish – within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Fulfilling this vision is simply the most urgent task of our times.
The growth debate
The book is a substantially revised and updated version of Jackson’s controversial study for the Sustainable Development Commission, an advisory body to the UK Government. Since the report was published in March 2009, President Sarkozy has asked world leaders to join a revolution in the measurement of economic progress, Sir Nicholas Stern has warned ‘at some point we would have to think about whether we want future growth’, and John Prescott has called the current economic growth model ‘immoral’.
Source: Earth Scan