19 Jan 2009
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Until now, it was a rarely pondered question: Between the virtual bookends of someone searching for revealing pictures of Lindsay Lohan online and a search engine producing said pictures, how much energy is consumed?
Thanks to an Internet mini-controversy this week, inquisitive minds now have a pretty good approximation: 0.0003 kilowatt hours.
A recent story in The Sunday Times of London focused on the research of Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, who studies the energy use associated with Internet search engines. Apparently taking some liberties with the scientist’s work, the story claimed that two Google searches produce roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea.
Dr. Wissner-Gross quickly shot back this week, telling a technology website that his work has nothing to do with the ubiquitous search engine and that his findings instead showed it takes an average of 20 milligrams of carbon dioxide a second to visit a website – no mention of Google; no mention of kettles. By then, however, the blog mill had already caught on to the story, and the Web was abuzz with musings about the link between dead trees and search results.
However, the most interesting response to the story came from Google itself, which went about analyzing exactly how much energy a single search uses.
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Source: The Globe and Mail
11 Dec 2008
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Globally, the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed an average of about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit (0.4 C) in 30 years, according to data collected from NOAA and NASA satellites. Over 80 percent of the planet has warmed by some measure.
Half of the globe has warmed at least half a degree Fahrenheit, and a quarter of the planet has warmed by at least one degree Fahrenheit, according to John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
A study of the Earth’s climate change since 1978, when satellite sensors started tracking the climate, does not show a uniform global warming pattern. A map shows the planet hotter and the top, cold at the bottom, with varying degrees of warm in the middle.
The fastest warming area is near the Northern Atlantic and Artic oceans. The greatest warming has been in Greenland, where temperatures have risen as much as 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit in 30 years. During the same period, much of the Antartic has cooled, some by as much as Greenland has warmed.
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Source: All Headline News
27 Jun 2008
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The college town of Marburg in Germany is taking the country’s green policies one step higher by mandating solar heating for new buildings and renovated edifices.
The town’s council passed the legislation on Friday, amid the protest of residents and politicians from the town, located in Hesse state.
Opposition politician Hermann Uchtmann accused the city of green dictatorship. Marburg Mayor Franz Kahle defended the new law, stressing that although it would cost residents and business owners $7,800 (5,000 euro) to install a solar panel, the cost would be paid off through savings in energy bills over a 15-year period.
The law takes effect Oct. 1. It requires a solar panel of 10 square feet (one square meter) for every 200 square feet (20 square meters) of surface area. Violators would be fined $1,551 (1,000 euro).
Exempt from the new law are buildings with an existing district heating system, a combined heat and power generator or a wooden pellet oven.
Marburg is the first German town to mandate cleaner energy sources be adopted by its residents. It has 80,000 residents.
Source: All Headline News
29 Apr 2008
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Time to start the finger-pointing again. A class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has begun to track the carbon footprint of different lifestyle in different nations. And the picture painted for the U.S. isn’t pretty: Even the most power conscious people in this country use more than twice the energy of the average person around the world. If you are looking for people with the worst carbon footprint, look among the super-rich such as Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, MIT says.
It is common knowledge that energy use in the U.S. has been at obscene levels for decades and that nations around the world aren’t happy with the fact that less than 5% of the world’s population is consuming almost one quarter of the energy available worldwide. A new study published by the MIT sheds additional light on this scenario and claims that no matter who you are, you are estimated to contribute at least twice and as much as five times as much greenhouse gas to the atmosphere as those living in the rest of the world.
The MIT class said that it compared the carbon emissions of Americans in a variety of lifestyles ranging from the homeless to multimillionaires, from Buddhist monks to soccer moms and compared them to those of other nations. What is interesting is that the group found that your carbon footprint impact rises with your income. The class estimated Bill Gates’ impact at 10,000 times the national average.
So, what about the average Americans and the ultra-energy conscious? There does not seem to be much hope that Americans can consider themselves as energy-conserving as people living in other countries anytime soon: “Regardless of income, there is a certain floor below which the individual carbon footprint of a person in the U.S. will not drop,” says Timothy Gutowski, professor of mechanical engineering, who taught the class that calculated the rates of carbon emissions.
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11 Feb 2008
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Research shows that converting grasslands and not rotating crops to produce biofuels can actually worsen global warming. Carbon or greenhouse emissions are actually contributing more to climate change than the fossil fuels like gasoline that biofuels are meant to replace. Lead author Joe Fargione says the conversion is not worthwhile.
The biofuels production race is on, but new research might slow the alternative fuel momentum. A new study by The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota finds that converting land for biofuel crops results in major carbon emissions, actually worsening the problem of global warming instead of mitigating it. The first-of-its-kind study will be published in Science later this month.
This research examines the conversion of land for biofuels and asks the question, “Is it worth it?” Does the carbon you lose by converting forests, grasslands and peatlands outweigh the carbon you save by using biofuels instead of fossil fuels?
“Surprisingly, the answer is no,” said lead author Joe Fargione, a scientist for The Nature Conservancy. “These natural areas store a lot of carbon, so converting them to croplands results in tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere.”
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Source: News Factor
4 Feb 2008
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will transmit the Beatles song “Across the Universe” towards the North Star or Polaris 431 light years away from Earth on Monday.
A large radio antennae near Madrid, Spain forming part of NASA’s international network of space communication facilities called Deep Space Network (DSN) will transmit the mp3 format of the song at 7 p.m. EST on Feb. 4. The network is part of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The transmission, which will make “Across the Universe” the first song to travel in space, is part of NASA’s program marking its 50th anniversary, the 50th year of the first U.S. satellite Explorer 1, and the 45th year of the DSN, which supports interplanetary spacecraft missions, and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe.
It will also mark the 40th anniversary of the recording to the said song, which contains the chorus line “Nothing’s gonna change my world.”
Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney sent NASA a message saying, “Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens.”
Source: All Headline News
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24 Jan 2008
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A National Aeronautics and Space Administration research revealed on Thursday that warmer oceans are causing Antarctica to lose more ice, speeding up the continent’s contribution to rising sea levels. The findings may affect forecasts of sea level rise caused by global warming especially the amount of ice water that Antarctica would contribute. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 said oceans will inundate coastal land by 18 to 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) by 2100.
According to Bloomberg, the net loss of ice mass in Antarctica increased to 196 billion metric tons in 2006 from 112 billion metric tons a decade earlier, the NASA said late yesterday in an e-mailed statement.
“Ice sheets are responding faster to climate warming than anticipated,” Eric Rignot, lead researcher, said in the statement. “Our new results emphasize the vital importance of continuing to monitor Antarctica using a variety of remote sensing techniques to determine how this trend will continue.”
Scientists said ice loss in 2006 was enough to raise sea levels by 0.5 millimeters (0.02 inches), up from 0.3 millimeters in 1996. Most of the melting ice was focused in West Antarctica’s Pine Island and the Antarctic Peninsula’s northern tip, where glaciers are breaking off into the sea at a faster pace.
“This is mostly a result of warmer ocean waters, which bathe the buttressing floating sections of glaciers, causing them to thin or collapse,” the scientists said.
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Source: All Headline News
7 Sep 2007
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A study released Thursday forecasts that global warming will shrink the Arctic ice cap much faster than previously expected, by more than 40 percent by 2050. Earlier studies had predicted it would be nearly a century before that much ice vanished.
Based upon a study of national and international computer models that closely matched the observed sea-ice extent during a 1979-1999 baseline period, the latest research was carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Led by oceanographer James Overland and meteorologist Muyin Wang, the report forecast summer sea ice loss across the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, Canada and Asia.
“This is a major change,” said James Overland adding, “This is actually moving the threshold up.”
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Source: All Headline News
11 May 2007
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The light bulb, the symbol of bright ideas, doesn’t look like such a great idea anymore, as lawmakers in the U.S. and abroad are talking about banning the century-old technology because of its contribution to global warming.
But what comes next? Compact fluorescent bulbs are the only real alternative right now, but “bulbs” that use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are quickly emerging as a challenger.
LEDs, which are small chips usually encased in a glass dome the size of a matchstick head, have been in use in electronics for decades to indicate, for example, whether a VCR is on or off.
Those LEDs were usually red or green, but a scientific breakthrough in the 1990s paved the way for the production of LEDs that produce white light. Because they use less power than standard incandescent bulbs, white LEDs have become common in flashlights.
Established players in the lighting industry and a host of startups are now grooming LEDs to take on the reigning champion of residential lighting, the familiar pear-shaped incandescent light bulb.
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Source: The Associated Press via Yahoo! News
11 May 2007
206 views
A number of companies have sketched out plans to convert algae into a feedstock for transportation fuel, but GreenFuel Technologies is farther along in bringing the concept to market than most.
And the Cambridge, Mass.-based company trotted out numbers at the Think Tomorrow Today conference sponsored by ThinkEquity Partners here (say that three times fast) to illuminate why the idea is getting so much attention.
First off, algae grows rapidly and grows constantly, which means that algae ponds can produce more oil per hectare in a year than traditional plant crops, said GreenFuel CFO Guillermo Espiga.
A hectare pond filled with algae can produce 15,000 to 80,000 liters of vegetable oil a year. Only about 6,000 liters of palm oil can be squeezed out of a hectare a year. Corn is only good for 120 hectares of oil a year, Espiga said.
Algae can also be converted into a variety of materials, insulating producers from changes in commodity prices to some degree. It can be turned into alcohol for ethanol, biomass that can be burned in a furnace, or animal feed (which can also be sold under the Soylent Green brand name in grocery stores). A single hectare can generate 8,000 gallons of oil, 2,400 gallons of ethanol a year and 2.6 tons of glycerin, a material bought by the cosmetics industry, he said.
But there’s more. GreenFuel plans to produce algae in ponds next to coal-fired power plants. The carbon dioxide from the plants is captured and provides the food for growing the algae. At a 100 megawatt coal-burning power plant, 100 acres of algae ponds, optimized with species that grow well in that particular environment, will consume 90 percent of the CO2 from the plant.
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Source: CNet
24 Apr 2007
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Dell has come under heavy fire for a promotion of its Plant a Tree for Me environmental programme in the Second Life virtual world.
As vnunet.com’s Silicon Valley Sleuth blog reported last week, Dell is giving away free ‘virtual trees’ which Second Life users can plant on private land and determine the pace at which they grow.
In a posting on a company blog, the computer maker marketed the event as an “expansion of Dell’s Plant a Tree for Me programme in Second Life”.
Dell’s real world promotion solicits donations from buyers to plant trees so that the the tree’s oxygen production offsets some of the carbon dioxide emissions caused during the manufacturing and use of the system.
Contrary to Dell’s assertions, the virtual tree planting does not help reduce carbon emissions.
The Second Life tree is essentially a software application that requires computing power to grow and show up in the virtual world, thereby increasing Second Life’s carbon emissions.
IT author Nicholas Carr has previously calculated that active Second Life players consume as much as 1,752kWh on a yearly basis, ranking the game only slightly below the average power consumption of the residents of Brazil.
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Source: VNUNet
