Scientists Weigh Use of Bacteria for Cleaner Fossil Fuel Production
May 18 — Much of the world’s oil reserves lies in giant tar sand stretches in places like Alberta and Venezuela. While the oil industry uses an energy-intensive and fairly dirty process to make steam to cook the oil out of the tar sands, underground bacteria simply eat the crude oil and break it down [...]
Read MoreClinton presses for funds to shore up U.S. climate policy leadership
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her budget in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She said that the United States needs to become a leader in climate change politics and economics [...]
Read MoreA Road Map to Deliver GM Crops to Third World Farmers
March 31 — In Burkina Faso, a school for the future regulators of Africa’s genetically modified (GM) crops is opening up next month. The school, called the African Biosafety Network of Expertise (ABNE), has been set up by the African Union and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The operators are careful [...]
Read MoreClimate Change May Make Plants More Fragrant
A warming climate could lead to a more fragrant world, but it might disturb an intricate communication system used by plants, according to a review published recently in Trends in Plant Science. When Jarmo Holopainen grew white cabbages in a greenhouse in Finland, he found that over many years of sunlight and elevated levels of [...]
Read MoreSearching for the Wildest Strawberries to Save Crop Diversity
ClimateWire/ New York Times, Mar ’10– It has been a long journey for the latest shipment of seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The vault, built into a Norwegian mountain near the North Pole, is the final defense for agriculture in the face of growing populations, a changing climate and rising threats to food [...]
Read MoreCompanies Work to Harness the Power of Waves
Harnessing the ocean waves for emission-free power seems like a tidy concept, but the ocean is anything but tidy. Waves crash from multiple directions on a seemingly random basis, and converting the kinetic energy into electricity is a frontier of alternative energy research that requires grappling with large unknowns. But with several utility companies and [...]
Read MoreIndia’s Future Energy Business Plan — Shop the World for More Coal
BOKARO, India — The men who work at Bokaro Steel City (there are few women) behave as though they are in the Wild West. Some are slick and charming with their words. They stand in air filled with fine coal dust that gets into every crevice of the skin and upper respiratory system, while saying [...]
Read MoreInjecting Tiny Proteins Into the Hunt for ‘Clean Coal’
As big engineering fixes go, “clean coal” has proved an elusive concept. Carbon capture projects remain experimental, expensive and energy intensive. But working with some of the tiniest things in nature, scientists are engineering proteins found in living things to trap carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants. “Biomimetic design” is the idea of using nature [...]
Read MoreDoes the Huge China-Australia Coal Deal Square With the Copenhagen Accord?
Environmental activists are attacking a $60 billion deal that will keep Chinese power stations supplied with Australian coal for at least the next two decades. Under the agreement announced last week, the Australian coal and iron ore mining company Resourcehouse will build a new mining complex to give China Power International Development 30 million tonnes [...]
Read MoreA roaring economy is hitched to a galloping coal addiction
JHARIA, India — Night falls here by 5 p.m. and people stream into the open-air market to catch the latest political news. They have much to discuss, because elections are currently on in the state of Jharkhand, which is famous for three things: corruption, a home-grown terrorism threat called Naxalism, and this area’s economic life, [...]
Read MoreAutomakers Hit Pay Dirt in Rural India
Rickshaws and bullock carts may be anachronisms elsewhere, but they are the standard means of transportation in rural India. But with government incentives and aggressive salesmanship by manufacturers, cars are making inroads into these untouched markets.
India is currently the 11th-largest passenger car market, and in the next five years it will become the seventh-largest, according to Ernst & Young. By 2030, the nation is expected to be the third-biggest after China and the United States. The country adds 1.5 million cars every year to its roads, and experts say sales could explode, a move that could greatly inflate India’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Read MoreNew Studies Point to ‘Carbon Starvation’ as a Cause for Tree Mortality
Tree death rates could increase globally because of rising temperatures and prolonged droughts linked to climate change, according to multiple studies.
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