Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
A better way to clean water?
Treating water for human consumption is costly and energy intensive. Is there a more efficient way to do it?
Gunter Pauli thinks so.
In the first innovation explored by PhD, entrepreneur and eco-designer Pauli in the ZERI Foundation’s two-year essay and video project The Blue Economy, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs, the self cleansing mechanism found in natural water sources is identified as a possible solution to treating water without the huge cost in chemicals and energy.
Rivers clean their own water all the time, and for free, Pauli says in his essay. Their secret? A combination of gravity and a swirling motion called the vortex. If there were a way to replicate that function in water treatment facilities, it would mean energy savings and less cost for producers down to consumers.
This is the idea that inspired Swedish inventors Curt Hallberg and Morten Oveson to design and build the technology to replicate the self-cleansing function of the vortex.
This Earth Day, call for clean energy
– Michael Brune is Executive Director of the Sierra Club, the largest grassroots environmental organization in the United States and author of Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal. –
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and people are looking back at an amazing 40 years of environmental successes. Americans have come together in their neighborhoods, cities, states and nationally to demand cleaner air and water – and they have been successful.
from Global News Journal:
Biofuels’ green credentials called into question
Biofuels were once seen as the perfect way to make transport carbon-free, but a series of EU studies are throwing increasing doubt on the green credentials of the alternative fuel.
The latest to be released gave a preliminary assessment that biodiesel from soybeans could create four times more climate-warming emissions than conventional diesel.
Factbox: Rich nations’ greenhouse emissions down 2.2 percent
Greenhouse gas emissions by industrialized nations fell by 2.2 percent in 2008, the steepest fall since 1992 as the world economy slowed, a Reuters compilation shows.
Following are official national greenhouse gas emissions data submitted to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in recent days.
from The Great Debate UK:
Impact of the volcano disruption on the airlines
- Joris Melkert, MSc BBA, is assistant professor in aerospace engineering at the Delft University of Technology. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Despite the announcement that air space could begin to re-open in Northern Europe, the Icelandic volcano eruption could prove to be a major turning point for the global airline industry with short- to medium-term questions already being asked by some about its future financial viability.
Skipping the risk mismanagement
Felix Salmon is a Reuters Blogger. This piece was produced by the Climate Desk collaboration.
About a decade ago, Miguel Torres planted 104 hectares of pinot noir grapes in the Spanish Pyrenees, 3,300 feet above sea level. It’s cold up there and not much good for grapes—at least not these days. But Torres, the head of one of Spain’s foremost wine families, knows that the climate is changing.
Betting on climate change
Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired. This piece was produced by the Climate Desk collaboration.
Last year, Beluga Shipping discovered that there’s money in global warming.
from The Great Debate UK:
Why the Icelandic volcano could herald even more disruption
- Dr Andrew Hooper is an Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology and is an expert on monitoring deformation of Icelandic volcanoes. The opinions expressed are his own. -
The unprecedented no-fly zone currently in force across much of Europe has already caused the greatest chaos to air travel since the Second World War. Thousands of flights have been cancelled or postponed with millions of travel plans affected.
What’s up with all the earthquakes?
This article by Julia Kumari Drapkin originally appeared in Global Post. The views expressed are her own.
The quake that hit China Wednesday was the latest in a string of earthquakes in the news lately. Many people are wondering what’s going on, so we decided to ask NASA. Eric Fielding is a geophysicist who uses satellites to study earthquakes at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in California.
Global area planted to biotech crops
(Reuters) – Genetically modified crops were planted on 134 million hectares (335 million acres) in 2009, up 7 percent from 2008, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).
The following is a look at the global area planted to biotech crops since the world’s first crop, a biotech soybean, was introduced in 1996.
