Archive for category Global Warming

Dry Water Shown to Be Effective in Trapping CO2 Emissions

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Warming on August 26, 2010

A sugar-resembling substance that can absorb carbon dioxide within itself has been developed by a team led by Andrew Cooper, from the University of Liverpool, in the UK. The substance is called “dry water”, because it’s made of water and because it’s dry, containing silica.

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Ratio Between Black Carbon and Sulphates in Atmosphere Crucial to Global Warming

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Dimming, Global Warming on July 30, 2010

Black carbons are emitted from diesel exhausts and burned biomass and are considered an environmental and health hazard all over the world. Besides the fact that they favor global dimming, black carbons also attract heat.

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Genetically Modified Enzyme Leads to Better Carbon Sequestration at Coal Powered Plants

Posted by Ovidiu in Energy news, Global Warming on July 24, 2010

Capturing the carbon dioxide that a coal-powered plant produces and sequestering it is not an easy task, and until now it rose the costs of the electricity produced by 80 percent. Due to researchers at Codexis, a Redwood, CA, company, genetically modified enzymes can make carbon dioxide capture much cheaper, increasing the cost of electricity by less than a third.

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New Study Estimates Impact of Soot on Global Warming and Timeframe of Actions to Be Taken

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Dimming, Global Warming on June 25, 2010

Soot is considered one of the most important threats to the environment, along with carbon dioxide. Princeton University researchers have described the contribution of soot (“carbonaceous aerosols”) to phenomena of global warming and global dimming. Soot is born by incomplete combustion and comes mostly from diesel engines and coal burning.

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Good News: Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Dropped by 1.1 Percent in 2009

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Warming on June 9, 2010

Among the dozen of bad news that keep filling our mailboxes daily, we once in a while read something worth smiling at: the global greenhouse emissions generated by energy use dropped for the first time since 1998, by 1.1 percent. Through this, the economic crisis has its good actions, because it reduced the industrial production and fossil fuel consumption worldwide.

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New Metal-Organic Frameworks In Action for Capturing Carbon Dioxide

Posted by Cristi in Global Warming on June 2, 2010

Climate change is one of the most controversial subjects of the century, because it is changing our planet in an non-imaginable way. Scientists have developed different ways (more or less efficient) to capture the CO2 excess resulted from human activity.

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UK Scientists Predict Aircraft as Significant Source of CO2 for Next 10 Years

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Warming on May 31, 2010

A 10-year prediction made by Bethan Owen and her colleagues from the UK’s CATE (Center for Air Traffic and the Environment) says that aircraft emissions will become the a significant source of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and will double or triple by 2050.

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Besides Warming the Planet, High CO2 Levels Could Also Affect Our Crops’ Nutritional Qualities

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Warming on May 20, 2010

We have been talking about global warming lately, and implicitly of carbon dioxide as being one of the gases associated with it. We have also been talking about carbon dioxide’s indirect effect on warming through the modification it brings to trees, but never has the carbon dioxide been associated with crop plants’ nutritional values before, which affect us, humans, directly.

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Too Much CO2 Causes Plants Not to Cool The Earth As They Should, Says Study

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Warming on May 5, 2010

Trees and green plants, generally, are used by the planet as a way to keep itself cool. A regular tree can evaporate as much as ten gallons of water a day, acting as a natural air conditioner for its surroundings. So trees are important for their CO2-sequestration capabilities and keeping things cool(er).

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Link Between Whale Droppings and Carbon Sequestration Discovered

Posted by Ovidiu in Global Warming on April 26, 2010

The Australian Antarctic Division performed a research in this area, and found out that the whale poo is very rich in iron – about some 10 million times richer than sea water, as Steve Nicol, one of the scientists, said: “The plants love it and it actually becomes a way of taking carbon out of the atmosphere.”

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