Environment

Trains, planes, buses and automobiles are more than just exhaust, when it comes to the full scope of environmental damage. There is a full life-cycle of processes associated with getting from Point A to Point B that we have difficult quantifying but in an article published today in Environmental Research Letters, researchers from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, say they have created a framework to help us calculate the true environmental cost of travel. The new framework incorporates less-considered environmental impacts…

Nothing makes modern progressives happy like hoping mankind regresses and nothing makes modern conservatives happy like hoping progress in the future will clean up the environment. Both sides may win, according to research led by Durham University.   The secret of a successful sandcastle could aid the revival of an ancient eco-friendly building technique in the future.  Parts of the Great Wall of China and the Alhambra at Granada in Spain were built using 'rammed earth', which means it lasts a long time and is sustainable, pleasing one side, and both of those have military…

At the opening of last week’s Nobel Laureate symposium, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu endorsed a low-tech tool to keep climate change at bay: white paint.  According to Chu’s colleague Art Rosenfeld, lightening our planet’s dark roofs and roads would be enough to offset the carbon emissions of cars for the next 11 years.   The principle behind Chu’s call to whitewash is pretty straightforward.  Light surfaces reflect more heat energy than dark ones.  Increasing the ground’s reflection will help to stave off warming of the earth’s surface. Chu’s proposal bears a lot of…

A genetic link to caring about global warming?   Al Gore has truly jumped the shark, you may be thinking.    But humans may be programmed by evolution to care about their environment, suggests research published today, because it impacts reproduction and fitness. Dr Peter Sozou of the University of Warwick suggests that individuals may have an innate tendency to care about the long-term future of their communities, over timescales much longer than an individual's lifespan. This in turn may help to explain people's wish to take action over long-term environmental problems. Sozou…

Studies of climate evolution and the ecology of past-times are often hampered by missing information – lost variables needed to complete the picture and thought untraceable have made too many assumptions necessary.   Scientists writing in in the June issue of New Journal of Physics have created a formula which they say will fill in the gaps in our knowledge and will help predict the future. A new method of reconstructing missing data will shed new light on how and why our climate moved us on from ice ages to warmer periods as researchers will be able to calculate lost information and put…

It is often envisioned that humans could return to a simpler, more rural way of life and thereby live a more environmentally friendly existence. This is not only unrealistic, but in examining the numbers it becomes clear just what a predicament our human population growth has put us in. First let’s consider the raw numbers regarding human impact on the planet and see where that leaves us. There are about 57,500,000 square miles of land available on the entire surface of the earth. There are also about 6,671,226,000 people on the planet as of July 2007. A simple calculation shows that this…

Let's be honest, the one thing you worry about most when driving your Hummer and sipping corporate-farmed coffee is how much damage that Union Oyster House ("oldest restaurant in America!") refrigerator magnet in your house is doing to the environment.    You're out of luck.   The refrigerator magnets scientists are a step closer to making are for  environmentally-friendly 'magnetic' refrigerators and air conditioning systems. Magnetic refrigeration technology could provide a 'green' alternative to traditional energy-guzzling gas-compression fridges and air conditioners.…

We have just finished the second version of our environmental database. This database includes not only our own published work but hundreds of publications regarding Salmon, Habitat, Climate Change, Invasive Weeds, and more.  We also have loads of GIS data. We want feedback! Please let us know if this library is helpful, what information should be added, and anything else you think. http://demeterdesign.net/downloads.html Hit the "PNW Reports" link for the pdfs. You may need to refresh this page if you are not able to view it properly. Java script required to get the fancy links but…

We already have a war on drugs, a war on terror, and war against everything French (freedom fries anyone?) but our capacity for war is seemingly unlimited and the newest vendetta has targeted high BMIs. That's right, we're fighting a war on fat people and the soldiers have just added a new weapon to their arsenal. Not only does obesity cause diabetes, heart diseases, stroke, cancers, depression, high blood pressure, asthma, arthritis, and urinary tract infections (i.e everything) but now obese people also cause global warming. If we could prove that obesity caused 9/11 and the AIDS epidemic…

Bio-oil is an aqueous, acidic, highly oxidized mixture. However, its high oxygen content and instability turn out to have a negative impact: bio-oil cannot be used directly as a liquid fuel. It would, however, be highly interesting as a source of basic raw materials if it were possible to convert it to alkanes. Alkanes, which are also commonly called paraffins, are saturated hydrocarbons; they are among the most important raw materials for chemical industry, and in particular as starting materials for the production of plastics. Furthermore, they are among the primary fuels in the world's…