Airbus A380 takes off with Green Fuel

This is an amazing news. The Super Jumbo has taken off and finished its test flight with green fuel.

Super Jumbo Takes Off Using 'Green' Fuel

"In our drive for cleaner fuels, GTL technology can help reduce local emissions and encourage sustainable mobility."

Airbus president and CEO Tom Enders said: "Fuel and energy are key challenges aviation is facing and for which technology and international research collaboration open up new horizons.

"Our alternative fuels roadmap requires innovation, diversity of ideas and options that need to be explored."

Sebastien Remy, head of Airbus' alternative fuels programme, said: "The age of easy energy is over."

Mr Remy said GTL was better than traditional kerosene jet fuel because it did not deplete the world's oil supply.

It produces less emissions of local pollutants, like carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons, and is virtually free of sulphur.

I think this is great great news, given that Air Travel causes Global Warming.

Sunita Narain on Tata Nano

http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/56973/.html

Ratan Tata will be a hero if he made a bus like Nano, according to Sunita Narain.

Next time you fly anywhere

remember that you are burning fuel.... I know some trips cannot be avoided. But if you can avoid flying or combine multiple flying trips into one or can use technology to deliver that presentation (when your physical presence is not required), you will be doing a lot of good to the environment as well as the future.

Just to give you a sense of how many gallons of fuel that a plane trip burns, I took this info from the ATA magazine for Oct/Nov/Dec 2007 in the CEO, Subodh Karnik's Welcome Message. According to him, a plane trip from California to Hawaii burns close to 5000 gallons of fuel (it is around 29 gallons per passenger). It is a welcome sign from CEO Karnik that ATA is trying to go green. But how much effort is really sufficient? Not very sure......

Reference: http://www.atasights.com

How much of an impact on the global climate change is the Air Traffic responsible?

According to the David Suzuki Foundation, it is around 5%.

Apparently, taking a vacation closer to home and choosing other efficient means of transport (Bus/Trains) can be beneficial to your aspirations of going green.

Look at this BBC report which talks about how the European Car makers are balking on the proposed emission targets.




=================================

Make use of technology to reduce flying

People fly regularly for business. Most of the time it is for meetings to make a presentation or two. In many cases, these trips can be avoided by making use of technology. Technological advances have made it possible to hold virtual meetings with participants dispersed geographical. Nothing beats a room with face to face interaction with attendees. But if you have to fill a meeting room with geographically dispersed people, then imagine the amount of CO2 that is emitted by flyers.

An interesting take on greening flying by an exec of Boeing.

A BBC News reporter at the Paris Air Show has written a nice article on the growing concerns about the environment by the Aircraft manufacturers. This is an extremely positive step.
Planemakers confront green issues

Carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft are a significant and growing contributor to harmful global warming. It is time for the industry to sort it out, says Scott Carson, chief executive of Boeing's commercial planes division.

Well, if you are rich and can afford one of the 12 private suites on a A380, then you should know that it is not recommended to have S*x in the air, as per a guideline issued by Singapore Airlines.

Singapore Airlines has taken the unusual step of publicly asking passengers on its new Airbus A380 plane not to engage in any s*xual activities.

Read it all here: >>>

Now why don't you just stay at your home? ;)



==============================

North Atlantic slows on the uptake of CO2

North Atlantic slows on the uptake of CO2

Further evidence for the decline of the oceans' historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia.

Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world’s oceans which act as a strong ‘sink’ for the emissions.

This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly.

A paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research by Dr Ute Schuster and Professor Andrew Watson of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences again raises concerns that the oceans might be slowing their uptake of CO2.

Results of their decade-long study in the North Atlantic show that the uptake in this ocean, which is the most intense sink for atmospheric CO2, slowed down dramatically between the mid-nineties and the early 2000s.

A slowdown in the sink in the Southern Ocean has already been inferred, but the change in the North Atlantic is greater and more sudden, and could be responsible for a substantial proportion of the observed weakening.

The observations were made from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments for measuring carbon dioxide in the water. Much of the data has come from a container ship carrying bananas from the West Indies to the UK, making a round-trip of the Atlantic every month. The MV Santa Maria, chartered by Geest, has generated more than 90,000 measurements of CO2 in the past few years.

The results show that the uptake by the North Atlantic halved between the mid-90s, when data was first gathered, and 2002-05.

“Such large changes are a tremendous surprise. We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean’s great mass,” said Dr Schuster.


Read More >>>



====================================

Environmental Hazards

Asbestos

From Wikipedia,
At the turn of the last century, asbestos was considered an ideal material for use in the construction industry. It was known to be an excellent fire retardant, to have high electrical resistivity, and was inexpensive and easy to use.

The problem with asbestos arises when the fibers become airborne and are inhaled. Because of the size of the fibers, the lungs cannot expel them. They are also sharp and penetrate tissues.

Health problems attributed to asbestos include

** Asbestosis - A lung disease first found in naval shipyard workers, asbestosis is a scarring of the lung tissue from an acid produced by the body's attempt to dissolve the fibers. The scarring may eventually become so severe that the lungs can no longer function. The latency period ( meaning the time it takes for the disease to develop) is often 10-20 years.
** Mesothelioma - A cancer of the mesothelial lining of the lungs and the chest cavity, the peritoneum (abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac surrounding the heart). Unlike lung cancer, mesothelioma has no association with smoking. The only established causal factor is exposure to asbestos or similar fibers. The latency period for mesothelioma may be 20-50 years. The prognosis for mesothelioma is grim, with most patients dying within 12 months of diagnosis.
** Cancer - Cancer of the lung, gastrointestinal tract, kidney and larynx have been linked to asbestos. The latency period for cancer is often 15-30 years.


Carbon Monoxide

From Wikipedia,
Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. It is the product of the incomplete combustion of carbon-containing compounds, notably in internal-combustion engines. It has significant fuel value, burning in air with a characteristic blue flame, producing carbon dioxide. Despite its serious toxicity, CO plays a highly useful role in modern technology, being a precursor to a myriad of products. It consists of one carbon atom covalently bonded to one oxygen atom. It is a gas at room temperature.

Carbon monoxide, though thought of as a pollutant today, has always been present in the atmosphere, chiefly as a product of volcanic activity. It occurs dissolved in molten volcanic rock at high pressures in the earth's mantle. Carbon monoxide contents of volcanic gases vary from less than 0.01% to as much as 2% depending on the volcano. It also occurs naturally in bushfires. Because natural sources of carbon monoxide are so variable from year to year, it is extremely difficult to accurately measure natural emissions of the gas.

Carbon monoxide has an indirect radiative forcing effect by elevating concentrations of methane and tropospheric ozone through chemical reactions with other atmospheric constituents (e.g., the hydroxyl radical, OH.) that would otherwise destroy them. Carbon monoxide is created when carbon-containing fuels are burned incompletely. Through natural processes in the atmosphere, it is eventually oxidized to carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide concentrations are both short-lived in the atmosphere and spatially variable.

Anthropogenic CO from automobile and industrial emissions may contribute to the greenhouse effect and global warming. In urban areas carbon monoxide, along with aldehydes, reacts photochemically to produce peroxy radicals. Peroxy radicals react with nitrogen oxide to increase the ratio of NO2 to NO, which reduces the quantity of NO that is available to react with ozone. Carbon monoxide is also a constituent of tobacco smoke.

In many countries, cement is crucial for growth but an enemy of green

In many countries, cement is crucial for growth but an enemy of green

By Elisabeth Rosenthal
Published: October 21, 2007

PARIS: In booming economies from Asia to Eastern Europe, cement is the glue of progress. The material that binds the ingredients of concrete together, cement is essential for constructing buildings and laying roads in much of the world.

Some 80 percent of cement is made in and used by emerging economies; China alone makes and uses 45 percent of global output. Production is doubling every four years in places like Ukraine.

But making cement creates pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and the greenest of technologies can reduce that by only 20 percent.

Cement plants already account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.

Compounding the problem, cement has no viable recycling potential, as the abandoned buildings that line roads from Tunisia to Mongolia demonstrate. Each new road, each new building, needs new cement.

Read More >>>



==============================================

New York Times: As Asia Keeps Cool, Scientists Worry About the Ozone Layer

As Asia Keeps Cool, Scientists Worry About the Ozone Layer
By KEITH BRADSHER

MUMBAI, India — Until recently, it looked like the depleted ozone layer protecting the earth from harmful solar rays was on its way to being healed.

But thanks in part to an explosion of demand for air-conditioners in hot places like India and southern China — mostly relying on refrigerants already banned in Europe and in the process of being phased out in the United States — the ozone layer is proving very hard to repair.

Four months ago, scientists discovered that the “hole” created by the world’s use of ozone-depleting gases — in aerosol spray cans, aging refrigerators and old air-conditioners — had expanded again, stretching once more to the record size of 2001.

An unusually cold Antarctic winter, rather than the rise in the use of refrigerants, may have caused the sudden expansion, which covered an area larger than North America.

Read More Here. >>>


===========================================

NUCLEAR POWER - THE CASE FOR

NUCLEAR POWER - THE CASE FOR
Ian Hore-Lacy

Australia's electricity is produced largely from coal, which contributes greatly to our high per capita carbon emissions, not to mention our very low electricity cost.

There is an emerging consensus that such relatively high carbon emissions are not satisfactory, so we need to reduce our dependence on coal whilst meeting the demand for a continuous, reliable supply of electricity on a large scale.

The main alternative for generation is nuclear power, with wind providing a useful but fickle supplement.

Read More Here >>>

http://www.cooltheglobe.com/article?article=19

=====================================================