Published on September 19th, 2009
A new report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says that biotechnology is one possible solution to our climate change and our economic problems.
It could have a dramatic effect on CO2 emissions, and it could also be part of the new green economy. How much can it help? The report says it can reduce global emissions by as much as some leading countries emit in a year.
What is biotechnology? How can it cool our climate and give a boost to our economy? Is it an appropriate and safe solution to these problems?
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Published on September 18th, 2009
181 of the world’s largest investors say that the climate agreement in Copenhagen needs to be strong and binding.
This is from companies managing over $13 trillion and is the largest such statement to date. Their proposals are even stronger than what most activist organizations are asking for.
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Tags:
business,
Climate Change,
Climate Conference,
Copenhagen,
economics,
economy,
environment,
global warming,
Kyoto,
new york,
politics
Published on September 15th, 2009
Australia has passed the US as the new world leader in CO2 emissions per capita. That is not the only climate change problem in Australia, though.
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Published on August 10th, 2009
A team of engineers have invented a breakthrough device that will make more accurate weather forecasts and give more advanced projections of climate change.
The high performance electronic device, known as a dual-polarized Frequency Selective Surface filter, can detect thermal emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere in ways never done before.
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Published on July 21st, 2009
You’d think this would be a “Buy American” type of issue. Growth Energy, an ethanol industry trade group, wants to raise the content in gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent in the United States.
The ethanol industry, of course, is firmly behind the proposal, made to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ethanol plant operators say a boost would bring jobs and investment on U.S. soil. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on July 16th, 2009
Just in time, too.
As climate change brings an increase in drought areas and rising sea levels we have to find a solution to soil salinity if our civilization is to survive.
Previous civilizations dependant on irrigation of dry soil have failed. The gradually increased salinity in irrigated dry soil has ended civilizations even though they solved the engineering and logistic problems of designing, building, and maintaining irrigation systems, but neglected the long-term effects of salinization.
We’ll have no choice but to learn to farm in salty water, as the next few centuries’ climate change dries up growing areas from California, Florida and the Middle East, to Africa and China and Australia - - and as seawater increasingly infiltrates crops on low-slung island nations.
So the research findings of a group of scientists from the University of Adelaide in Australia and Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK. attempting to learn to grow crops in saltwater is very good news.
The team has succeeded in keeping salt out of the leaves of the first plant species tested:
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Published on July 16th, 2009
The discovery of a tiny bowl-shaped molecule which collects carbon dioxide right out of the air has beckoned some creative solutions to global warming.
By genetically engineering microbes to manufacture the handy molecule, scientists hope to make it useful as an industrial absorbent for CO2 capture. That could help clean up smokestacks from dirty coal-fired power plants, but it’s also possible that the molecules could be used for pulling carbon dioxide right out of the ambient air.
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Tags:
carbon dioxide,
chemistry,
clean coal,
cleantech,
Climate Change,
coal,
environment,
global warming,
industrial waste,
molecular biology,
pollution,
technology
Published on July 9th, 2009
Whats even dumber and more shortsighted than drilling the melting arctic for the last drops of oil? Drilling the melting Arctic for those last drops of oil using nuclear power.
In a cavalier act of ecological vandalism, and driven by frank Russian acknowledgement of imminent peak oil in heartland Siberia, the imposingly named The United Industrial Corporation, is planning to build a series of floating power stations to circle the arctic with nuclear-powered oil drilling capability.
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Published on July 7th, 2009
Look, I know we usually cover the innovative solutions that we humans invent here - but when nature itself comes up with a perfect solution to a really big problem; shouldn’t we cover that at Cleantechnica too? Shouldn’t we cover innovative NatureTech too?
The two most overwhelming technological problems of our age are that
- Because of the rapidity of climate change; ecosystems and species cannot evolve fast enough to avoid extinction.
- Our species uses more than one planet’s resources.
What will be left after just a century or climate change will be something as different from our current climate as the Jurassic period was; but it is happening millions of years faster. Even we humans are not adapted to that whole new climate that we are creating with climate change. Yet.
Image: Atomic Avenue #1 by Glen Orbik
It would be like moving to Mars next month for us. We’re just not adapted yet…
We know the problem: it’s big. And we have thought up some gigantic solutions to these problems we have created. But for a totally different kind of out of the box innovative thinking: — in news today from the BBC:
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Published on June 21st, 2009
Goes one further….
If every building had a white roof, we would be able to cool the surrounding areas. That is the reasoning behind a California law about to go into effect next month requiring light reflective roofs on all new buildings. It is already the law for new flat roofs here.
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