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US President Barack Obama has started reversing former President George W Bush's climate change policies with steps to raise fuel efficiency standards and grant states authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

An administration official said late on Sunday that Obama, who took office last week, would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a request by California to impose its own strict limits on automobile carbon dioxide emissions.

The request was denied under the Bush administration, prompting California and several other states to sue. The official said a final decision by the EPA would likely take several months.

Another official familiar with the policy shift said Obama would instruct the EPA to approve the waiver allowing California to impose the rules. The state asked the new administration last week to reconsider its request.

If the EPA reverses the previous ruling, more than 12 US states could proceed with plans to impose strict carbon dioxide limits.

California wants to reduce the emissions by 30 per cent by 2016 – the most ambitious federal or state effort to address global warming.

Ailing carmakers, which have accelerated efforts to build more environmentally friendly vehicles, have fought the California statute, but braced for a policy reversal once Obama won the November 4 election.

Obama promised on the campaign trail to take aggressive action to fight global warming and reduce emissions blamed for heating the earth. He is scheduled to deliver remarks on jobs, energy independence and climate change in the East Room of the White House on Monday.

The White House official said Obama would also direct the Department of Transportation to move forward with setting 2011 vehicle fuel efficiency standards by March.

The president's memorandum would instruct the agency to reconsider how such standards are set for later years in a separate process, he said.

The Bush administration sought to finish the fuel efficiency regulation by December, but took no action due to the uncertain financial prospects of US automakers.

Automakers, including big foreign manufacturers, have opposed the California waiver on grounds that approving it would create a confusing patchwork of state rules based on tailpipe emissions.

The California statute was intended to take effect for 2009 model year vehicles already in showrooms, while the federal government, according to Obama's order, will have its own new efficiency rules in place by March for cars made between 2011-2015. The federal standards are considered weaker.

Activists welcomed the moves.

"These actions are a clear demonstration that President Obama recognizes the urgency of moving America to clean energy and tackling the climate crisis in 2009," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

California Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, promised to work with the EPA to ensure the California waiver moved forward quickly.

Obama has spent his first few days in office overturning his predecessor's policies. On Thursday, he signed an order to close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year and he lifted restrictions on Friday on US government funding for groups that provide abortion services abroad.

Shortly after his victory in the November 4 election, Obama reiterated his commitment to bringing the United States firmly back into the fold of nations trying to reach a global agreement to limit emissions once the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol runs out at the end of 2012.

House Democrats on Thursday revealed details of a massive legislative effort they said would inject new life into a flagging U.S. economy, thanks to a combination of $825 billion in tax cuts and new government spending.

The sprawling, 258-page draft bill includes $32 billion in electric power upgrades, sometimes known as "smart grid" technology, $6 billion for expanded broadband Internet access, and $20 billion for health care information technology.

"The economy is in a crisis not seen since the Great Depression," said letter published Thursday by Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who heads the House Appropriations Committee. "Credit is frozen, consumer purchasing power is in decline, in the last four months the country has lost 2 million jobs and we are expected to lose another 3 (million) to 5 million in the next year."

The House leadership has said it would like to hold a floor vote on the package by January 28 and send it to President-elect Barack Obama by mid-February. One potential obstacle is negotiations with the Senate, which is likely to have its own priorities.

The energy-related sections of what is tentatively called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 include $11 billion for research and development related to the "Smart Grid Investment Program;" $8 billion in loans guarantees for renewable energy generation; $2 billion for loan guarantees to high-capacity battery makers; and $200 million for a grant program for electric vehicles.

Some other portions, excerpted from the summary prepared by Rep. Obey's office:

• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Research: $2 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities to foster energy independence, reduce carbon emissions, and cut utility bills. Funds are awarded on a competitive basis to universities, companies, and national laboratories.
• Home Weatherization: $6.2 billion to help low-income families reduce their energy costs by weatherizing their homes and make our country more energy efficient.
• Cleaning Fossil Energy: $2.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration technology demonstration projects. This funding will provide valuable information necessary to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from industrial facilities and fossil fuel power plants.
• Alternative Buses and Trucks: $400 million to help state and local governments purchase efficient alternative fuel vehicles to reduce fuel costs and carbon emissions.

In terms of wireless and broadband, the legislation would require the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (part of the Commerce Department) to create a grant program for "nonrecurring" costs of broadband deployment in rural, suburban, and urban areas--meaning, basically, anywhere in the country. NTIA is supposed to prioritize "unserved" and "underserved" areas, two terms that have no actual meaning until the Federal Communications Commission eventually comes up with one.

State governments may apply for grants by submitting reports listing which of their areas have unserved wireless voice, underserved "advanced wireless broadband," unserved basic broadband, and underserved "advanced broadband service." NTIA will dole out separate funds for wireless deployment and broadband deployment.

"Advanced broadband service" is defined as at least 45 megabits per second downstream and 15 megabits per second upstream; "advanced wireless broadband" is 3 mb/sec downstream and 1 mb/sec upstream.

Whether this so-called stimulus will have any positive effect on the economy is uncertain, though, because the U.S. Treasury will pay for it by running up the national debt significantly and future generations of taxpayers will be expected to pay it back.

The bailout's cost so far has ballooned to $8.5 trillion, not counting the $5.2 trillion in Fannie and Freddie guarantees, although the Treasury should eventually recover some or even much of this amount. If deficit spending were a sure way to stimulate the economy, the Treasury could simply borrow, say, $100 trillion -- and the economic malaise of the last few months would evaporate.

A recent article by Greg Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard and former adviser to President Bush, surveys recent research and concludes that each dollar of government spending increases economic activity by only 1.4 dollars, while (according to Obama's top economics adviser) a dollar of tax cuts raises the GDP by about $3. And Tyler Cowen of George Mason University suggests that "we are being asked to spend (untold) hundreds of billion dollars" even though the evidence it will have a positive impact "is inconclusive."

NASA scientist James Hansen issues a dire warning to the president elect.

NASA scientist and climate expert Dr. James Hansen issued a dire warning to President elect Barack Obama saying he had four years to save the world.  Dr. Hansen is head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) and has long been one of the champions of the global warming movement.  Oftentimes controversial and confrontational, he had some very stark words recently.

He is warning the incoming president that now is the time to act and drastic measures need to be taken to curb the effects of manmade climate change.  According to Dr. Hansen, soaring carbon emissions threaten man’s very existence and after having supposedly been stymied in his efforts the last 10 years by politicians, the new administration must use the opportunity to act to save the planet.

We cannot afford to put off change any longer.  We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.
- Dr. James Hansen, Goddard Institute of Space Studies

In a recent letter Dr. Hansen sent to President elect Obama and his wife Michelle, he urges a complete and total moratorium and phase out of coal fired power generating plants, our nation’s primary source of electricity.  Blaming coal as the primary source of carbon dioxide, he believes this measure is critical and also advocates severely taxing the industry for its emissions.  In the letter Dr. Hansen notes that it is low and middle income people that may bear the brunt of the increased energy costs from his measures.

His solution to the energy needs of the nation is to build nuclear power plants, something which in the past has been fought vehemently by those supporting the global warming theory.  A potential problem however with Dr. Hansen’s approach is that he does not feel that currently available nuclear technology is a viable solution and wants research done on a “4th generation” of nuclear power plants.  How the nation is supposed to make up the gap between immediately shutting down coal fired plants and the time it would take to research this new generation of power plants is unclear. 

Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, is one of the leading advocates of the manmade global warming theory.

Dr. Hansen is more than just a little bit extreme in his beliefs and has seen more than his share of controversy.  He has accused the Bush administration of trying to silence him, has urged criminal trials for the executives of energy companies for spreading doubt about manmade climate change and advocated for the acquittal of Greenpeace activists that damaged a coal fired power plant saying the power plant was more damaging.  Twice in recent years he and GISS have been repudiated for releasing incorrect data – first when he claimed 1998 was the hottest year of the 20th century and more recently when he said October 2008 was the warmest month ever measured.  Both of those claims were disproved by other scientists when the data was thoroughly analyzed. 

Dr. Hansen will almost certainly have the ear of the new president or at least those of some in his administration but what effect he will have on the global warming debate is unknown. 

PARIS -- Scientists on Wednesday unveiled evidence to suggest global warming is affecting all of Antarctica, home to the world's mightiest store of ice.

The average temperature across the White Continent has been rising for the last half century and the finger of blame points at the greenhouse effect, they said. The research, published in the British journal Nature, takes a fresh look at one of the great unknowns -- and dreads -- in climate science.

Any significant thaw of Antarctica could drown many coastal cities and delta regions. Bigger than Australia, Antarctica holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 57 meters (185 feet). Previous monitoring has already pinpointed the Antarctic Peninsula -- the tongue that juts 800 kilometers (500 miles) towards South America -- as a "hotspot" where hundreds of glaciers have been in retreat since the start of the decade. But until now the news has been reassuring regarding Antarctica's two massive icesheets.

Indeed, a common belief is that the icy slabs have even cooled slightly and possibly thickened, partly in response to the chilling seasonal effects of the ozone hole over the South Pole. Not so, the new study says. It calculates that West Antarctica has been warming by 0.17 degrees Celsius (0.3 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade over the past 50 years. This is even more than the Peninsula, where the average rise is estimated as 0.11 C (0.2 F) per decade.

There has indeed been some cooling in East Antarctica, but this was mainly in the autumn, and occurred as a result of the ozone hole. There was also a period of strong cooling between 1970 and 2000. But, overall and when calculated over 50 years, East Antarctica has warmed too -- by an average of 0.1 C (0.18 F) per decade, a figure that the authors describe as "significant".

"The sense of 'Oh, it's cooling in East Antarctica,' is based essentially on the 1970-2000 period, and it's warmed since then -- although we don't have a lot of data for the most recent period -- and it definitely warmed prior to the 1970s," Eric Steig, a professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, told AFP.

"When you look at the big picture on that, the average [trend in East Antarctica] is actually warming."

Put together, the average temperature rise for Antarctica is put at 0.12 C (0.22 F) per decade, the study said. The work is based on a 25-year archive of observations by satellites measuring the intensity of infrared light radiated by the snow pack. These were buttressed by data from automated weather stations deployed around the Antarctic coast since 1957.

The paper does not venture any estimate about ice loss or predict the icesheets' stability, but says only global warming can logically explain the temperature trend.

"This shouldn't cause anyone to worry more than they did before. But what it does do is kill off the rather silly and careless statements out there from some people to the effect that Antarctica's cooling," said Steig.

Such comments "put into question all the other science that supports the idea that there is warming and it's human beings' fault," he said.

There could be bad news a few decades down the road, when efforts to fix the ozone hole bear fruit, added Steig.

"The hole could be eliminated by the middle of this century. If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world," he warned.

The West Antarctic icesheet, which holds enough ice to boost global sea levels by up to six metres (19.5 feet), lies at an average height of about 1,800 metres (6,000 feet).

The East Antarctic icesheet, divided from West Antarctica by a mountain chain, has an average elevation of around 3,000 meters (10,000 feet), which makes it not only bigger but also colder.

If it melted in its entirety -- something that most scientists discount except only as a very distant doomsday scenario -- today's coastlines would be drowned to a height of 50 meters (165 feet).

Jellyfish blooms are ruining some of the world's most beautiful vacation spots, according to a new online report by the National Science Foundation on massive jellyfish swarms in U.S. waters and around the world.

At least 150 million people around the world are exposed to jellyfish every year, the report says. Swarms of stinging jellyfish and jellyfish-like animals are transforming many world-class fisheries and tourist destinations into "jellytoriums" that are intermittently jammed with the pulsating, gelatinous creatures.

This is happening in U.S. waters from Hawaii to the Chesapeake Bay, where 500,000 people are stung by jellyfish every year.

Another 200,000 people are stung every year in Florida, and 10,000 are stung in Australia by the deadly Portuguese man-of-war, according to the report.

These jellyfish explosions are generated by human activities, some scientists believe. Possible causes include pollution, climate change, introductions of non-native species, overfishing and the presence of artificial structures, such as oil and gas rigs.

Jellyfish swarms have damaged fisheries, fish farms, seabed mining operations, desalination plants and large ships, and they have disabled nuclear power plants by clogging intake pipes.

Dense jellyfish swarm in the Gulf of Mexico (Photo by Monty Graham)

In the Gulf of Mexico's densest jellyfish swarms there are more jellyfish than there is water - 100 jellyfish can occupy each cubic meter of water.

"I'm often asked whether a single, overarching condition is triggering jellyfish swarms in diverse locations," says Monty Graham of Alabama's Dauphin Island Sea Lab on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico. Graham says the abnormally large, dense or frequent jellyfish swarms are "a symptom of an ecosystem that has been tipped off balance by environmental stresses."

"The exact nature of such balance-tipping environmental stresses may vary from place to place and usually involve unique interactions with local ecology," Graham explains. "But such stresses are often caused by people."

So, just as a weakened person is vulnerable to opportunistic diseases, stressed ecosystems are vulnerable to infestations of jellyfish.

"There is clear, clean evidence that certain types of human-caused environmental stresses are triggering jellyfish swarms in some locations," William Hamner of the University of California at Los Angeles says in the report.

These stresses include the introduction of jellyfish species into non-native habitats by ships; the formation of ultra-polluted areas, known as Dead Zones, where jellyfish face few predators and competitors; and increases in water temperatures, which accelerate the growth and reproduction of many jellyfish species.

As prey, jellyfish are eaten by seabirds, salmon, sun fish, turtles and other gelatinous creatures.

But as marine turtles have disappeared, jellyfish have proliferated. All seven species of sea turtles eat jellyfish and all seven species are endangered. Their survival is threatened by fishing lines that trap them, pollution, beach development, climate change and sales of turtles and turtle parts.

Box jellyfish in Hawaii (Photo courtesy Waikiki Aquarium)

Jellyfish are not all bad - scientists are identifying ecological services provided by the gelatinous creatures. For instance, recent studies show that the tentacles dangling from the Bering Sea's large jellyfish provide hiding places for young pollock that are pursued by other predators but have grown too big for the jellyfish to eat.

Most species of jellyfish and jellyfish-like animals are not harmful to people, according to the National Science Foundation report. But it warns that all true jellyfish and some species of jellyfish-like creatures sting - and a single stinging tentacle may be studded with thousands of stingers.

Stinging gelatinous creatures cause various reactions in people, ranging from no noticeable sensation to rashes, and some cases, death.

Australia's beaches host many types of toxic gelatinous animals, including the Portuguese man-of-war and the world's most venomous animal, the Chironex fleckeri, which can kill a person in under three minutes. In addition, the potentially deadly Irukandji jellyfish, currently increasing in number, are small enough to slip through nets that protect Australia's beaches from the larger Chironex.

Beware, warns the report. Gelatinous creatures that are harmful to people live in every ocean.

Click here to view the report, "Jellyfish Gone Wild: Environmental Change and Jellyfish Swarms."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

The first satellite dedicated to monitoring greenhouse gas emissions as part of global efforts to combat climate change was launched into space today from Japan.

The IBUKI, which means "breath," will circle the globe every 100 minutes at an altitude of some 670 kilometers (416 miles) and will monitor the levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane at 56,000 locations.

The satellite will acquire data covering the entire planet every three days and this data will be shared with other space and scientific organizations.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, launched the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) at 12:54 pm Japan Standard Time from the Tanegashima Space Center.

The launch vehicle flew smoothly, and, at about 16 minutes after liftoff, the separation of the IBUKI was confirmed, JAXA officials said.

Japan's Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite IBUKI (Photo courtesy JAXA)

"The satellite is expected to play an important role in monitoring global environmental changes and look out for any small warning signs that could affect our future," said JAXA in a statement.

JAXA said the satellite project will observe the concentration distribution of greenhouse gases thought to be a primary cause of global warming, and help reduce carbon dioxide emissions covered by the Kyoto Protocol.

Signed in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, the international treaty that limits the emission of six greenhouse gases took effect in February 2005. The target for Japan is six percent below 1990 levels.

The protocol's first commitment period expires at the end of 2012 and it is expected to be replaced by a treaty to be finalized in December.

While the Kyoto Protocol requires that 35 industrialized countries meet precise emissions limits, in reality, says IBUKI project manager Takashi Hamazaki, there are no standardized means to measure greenhouse gas emissions, and the amount of emissions reported is based on self-declaration.

The amount is calculated based on assumptions about the volume of the countries' oil consumption, car-driving distances and industrial gas emissions, among other factors.

"Therefore if GOSAT observation makes it possible to estimate greenhouse-gas absorption and emission per continent or large country, we'll be able to use the data as a means of verification," he said.

GOSAT has three major mission objectives. The first is to monitor the density of greenhouse gases precisely and frequently worldwide.

The second is to study the absorption and emission levels of greenhouse gases per continent or large country over a certain period of time.

And the third objective is to develop and establish advanced technologies that are essential for precise greenhouse gas observations.

Hamazaki said, "Over the last few years, global warming has become a serious concern around the world. Discussions on how to reduce the rate of global warming are taking place both domestically and internationally, and include such strategies as reducing the level of carbon dioxide emissions by half over the next 50 years."

"To accomplish this goal," Hamazaki said, "we must improve the accuracy of observations and long-term climate-change predictions. Up to now, global warming predictions have been performed by research organizations around the world through supercomputer simulations based on ground observation data."

In Japan, the National Institute for Environmental Studies, the Meteorological Research Institute, and the University of Tokyo are participating in global warming modeling.

Hamazaki said there are only about 260 ground observation points at present, and they are not evenly distributed, "so we can by no means say we are observing the entire globe."

"Thus, under the present circumstances, global warming predictions vary and may not be accurate," he said.

By comparison, he said, GOSAT will have 56,000 observation points on the Earth, and will be able to acquire data covering the entire globe every three days. "We think this will improve the accuracy of global warming predictions."

IBUKI will be "watching how the Earth breathes," he said.

Hamazaki says Japan hopes the data gathered by IBUKI will be useful to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which summarizes research results from all over the world. The IPCC will be publishing a report on climate change predictions for the next 100 years.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2009. All rights reserved.

The Brazil government has unveiled a national action plan on climate change on December 1, with as a key goal to reduce Amazon deforestation by 72% by 2017.

Deforestation would be reduced to 574,200 hectares per year at the end of the period, from an ongoing rate of 1,196,800 hectares per year. The plan estimates that reduced deforestation over the 8 year period would result in avoided emissions of some 4.8 billion tons of CO2, a figure higher than the annual emissions of the European Union.

The new plan contrasts with past Brazil government stances, that typically put the blame of climate change on industrialized countries and the burden on them to reduce emissions. According to environment minister Carlos Minc, the establishment of emission reduction targets has been possible because of a change of perception among society and government regarding climate change.

Key to the plan's implementation is Brazil's new Amazon fund, for which Norway has pledged to contribute up to $ 1 billion. Norway's contribution to the fund will depend on actual achievements by Brazil to reduce deforestation. Other industrialized countries are invited to contribute to the fund. Other aspects of the new plan, which will be subject to annual evaluations, include biofuel development, solar energy, fuel-efficient cars and reducing waste of energy.

Currently available information does not provide specifics as to how Brazil will achieve its sizable deforestation reduction targets, yet the NGO reaction was generally positive. WWF-Brazil stated for example that the governmental goal was "reasonably ambitious. " Along with eight other NGOs, WWF-Brazil maintains that zero deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is achievable by 2015, if key actors-ranging from indigenous peoples to ranchers-are compensated for conserving the forest and thereby avoiding deforestation.

The announcement of the national action plan on climate change came on the heels of the revelation by the country's space agency INPE of new deforestation figures, totalling 1,196,000 hectares from August 2007 to July 2008. The data relate to the legal Amazon only and represent a 3.8% increase over the previous year.

Posted in Security, 12th December 2008 19:07 GMT

Malicious hackers have been charged with all manner of misdeeds, from mounting the biggest military hack ever to sending Viagra to Bill Gates to crashing sewerage systems. On Friday, Greenpeace accused cybercrooks of conspiring to allow actions that threaten the balance of nature by helping to destroy the Amazon rainforest.

Some Brazilian states used a computerised allocation system to levy how much timber can be logged in each area. However, logging firms attempted to subvert these controls by hiring hackers to break systems and increase the companies' allocations.

Greenpeace reckons these types of computer swindles were responsible for the excess export of 1.7 million cubic metres of timber (or enough for 780 Olympic-sized swimming pools, as the group helpfully points out) before police broke up the scam last year. Brazilian authorities are suing logging firms for 2 billion reais (US$833m).

Federal authorities are due to release more details of the prosecution of 107 logging and charcoal firms later on Friday, Greenpeace reports. A total of 202 people are facing prosecution in the case, it adds. ®

Former inhabitants of the Amazon Basin enriched their fields with charcoal and transformed some of the Earth's most infertile soils into some of the most productive. They disappeared 500 years ago, but their soil is still rich in organic matter and nutrients.

Now, scientists, environmental groups and policymakers forging the next world climate agreement see the charred organic material that they have dubbed "biochar" as a tool for replenishing soils and as a tool for combating global warming.

Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia-Athens research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering, was a contributor to the biochar proposal submitted by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification at a side event held last week at the UN climate change conference meeting in Poland. The new climate change agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"The potential of biochar lies in its ability to sequester - capture and store - huge amounts of carbon while also displacing fossil fuel energy, effectively doubling its carbon impact," said Steiner, a soil scientist whose research in the Amazon Basin originally focused on the use of biochar as a soil amendment.

At UGA's Biorefinery and Carbon Cycling Program, he now investigates the global potential of biochar to sequester carbon. Steiner also serves as a consultant to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, UNCCD, a treaty parallel to the climate change convention.

In Poland, the secretariat of the desertification convention proposed that biochar management be included in the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism as a way for industrialized countries to earn certified emissions reduction credits towards meeting their greenhouse gas limits. The CDM already includes afforestation and reforestation.

Biochar is applied to land in Indonesia. (Photo courtesy biochar.org)

The global carbon trade market must be made accessible to land managers, especially in the tropics where sustaining soil organic carbon and soil fertility is most challenging and CO2 emissions due to land use change are highest, secretariat proposes.

Steiner explains that almost any kind of organic material - peanut shells, pine chips and even poultry litter - can be burned in air-tight conditions in a process called pyrolysis. The byproducts are biochar, a highly porous charcoal that helps soil retain nutrients and water, and gases and heat that can be used as energy.

Because the carbon in biochar resists degradation, it can sequester carbon in soils for hundreds of years, making it a permanent sink - a natural system that soaks up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Soils containing biochar made by ancient Amazon people still contain up to 70 times more carbon than surrounding soils and have a higher nutrient content.

Steiner said scientists estimate biochar from agriculture and forestry residues can potentially sequester billions of tons of carbon in the world's soils.

Despite the fact that the world's soils hold more organic carbon than that held by the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and vegetation combined, land as a factor in carbon sequestration has remained under-recognized.

As the Earth is placed under more stress to produce food, fiber and energy, more carbon is removed from the ground and emitted into the atmosphere. A side effect of this ongoing global carbon cycle is the reduction of the soil's fertility.

Biochar, or charcoal, is one solution to slow down and reverse the process. Biochar also avoids the disadvantages of other bioenergy technologies that deplete soil organic matter, said Steiner.

"Removing crop residues for bioenergy production reduces the organic matter accumulating on agricultural fields and thus the soil organic carbon pool, which depends on constant input of decomposing plant material," Steiner said. "In contrast, pyrolysis with biochar carbon sequestration produces renewable energy, sequesters CO2 and cycles nutrients back into agricultural fields."

Inside the UGA biorefinery (Photo courtesy UGA)

This unique system ideally utilizes waste biomass, and thus does not compete with food production," said Steiner. Currently most waste biomass decomposes or is burned in the field. Both processes release carbon dioxide stored in the plant biomass - for no other use than getting rid of it. Biochar can capture up to 50 percent of the carbon stored in biomass and establishes a significant carbon sink, as long as renewable resources are used and biochar is used as a soil amendment.

In partnership with Eprida, a private company in Athens, Georgia, UGA's Biorefinery and Carbon Cycling Program hosts a pilot thermochemical biorefinery on the university's Athens campus. The biorefinery converts peanut hulls to hydrogen and to biochar.

To address our world's climate change dilemma, said Steiner, "We need a carbon sink in addition to greater energy efficiency and renewable energy. Acceptance of the UNCCD proposal in Poland is a first step to make carbon trading based on biochar a reality."

"This has not only consequences for mitigating climate change, but also for agricultural sustainability," he said, "and could provide a strong incentive to reduce deforestation, especially in the tropics."

To view the UN Convention to Combat Desertification proposal on biochar presented in Poland, click here.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 18, 2008) — MIT researchers are working with Portuguese colleagues to design a pilot-scale device that will capture significantly more of the energy in ocean waves than existing systems, and use it to power an electricity-generating turbine.

Wave energy is a large, widespread renewable resource that is environmentally benign and readily scalable. In some locations — the northwestern coasts of the United States, the western coast of Scotland, and the southern tips of South America, Africa and Australia, for example — a wave-absorbing device could theoretically generate 100 to 200 megawatts of electricity per kilometer of coastline. But designing a wave-capture system that can deal with the harsh, corrosive seawater environment, handle hourly, daily and seasonal variations in wave intensity, and continue to operate safely in stormy weather is difficult.

Chiang Mei, the Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been a believer in wave energy since the late 1970s. After the recent oil-price spike, there has been renewed interest in harnessing the energy in ocean waves.

To help engineers design such devices, Professor Mei and his colleagues developed numerical simulations that can predict wave forces on a given device and the motion of the device that will result. The simulations guide design decisions that will maximize energy capture and provide data to experts looking for efficient ways to convert the captured mechanical energy to electrical energy.

One country with a good deal of expertise in wave energy research and development is Portugal. For the past three years, Mei has been working with Professors Antonio Falcao, Antonio Sarmento, and Luis Gato of Insitituto Superior Tecnico, Technical University of Lisbon, as they plan a pilot-scale version of a facility called an oscillating water column, or OWC. Situated on or near the shore, an OWC consists of a chamber with a subsurface opening. As waves come in and out, the water level inside the chamber goes up and down. The moving surface of the water forces air trapped above it to flow into and out of an opening that leads to an electricity-generating turbine. The turbine is a design by A.A.Wells in which the blades always rotate in the same direction, despite the changing direction of the air stream as the waves come in and out.

The Portuguese plan is to integrate the OWC plant into the head of a new breakwater at the mouth of the Douro River in Porto, a large city in northern Portugal. Ultimately, the installation will include three OWCs that together will generate 750 kilowatts — roughly enough to power 750 homes. As a bonus, the plant's absorption of wave energy at the breakwater head will calm the waters in the area and reduce local erosion.

The challenge is to design a device that resonates and thus operates efficiently at a broad spectrum of wave frequencies — and an unexpected finding from the MIT analysis provides a means of achieving that effect. The key is the compressibility of the air inside the OWC chamber. That compressibility cannot be changed, but its impact on the elevation of the water can be — simply by changing the size of the OWC chamber. The simulations showed that using a large chamber causes resonance to occur at a wider range of wavelengths, so more of the energy in a given wave can be captured. "We found that we could optimize the efficiency of the OWC by making use of the compressibility of air — something that is not intuitively obvious," Mei says. "It's very exciting."

He is currently working with other graduate students on wave power absorbers on coastlines of different geometries and on how to extract wave power from an array of many absorbers.

Mei continues to be enthusiastic about wave energy, but he is not unrealistic in his expectations. Although costs have been falling in recent years, wave energy is unlikely to be commercially viable for a long time — perhaps several decades. Nevertheless, Mei is adamant that more attention should be given to this renewable source of energy, and he would like to see a team of MIT experts in different fields — from energy capture and conversion to transmission and distribution — working collaboratively toward making large-scale wave energy a reality.

"Given the future of conventional energy sources, we need lots of research on all kinds of alternative energy," he says. "Right now, wind energy and solar energy are in the spotlight because they've been developed for a longer time. With wave energy, the potential is large, but the engineering science is relatively young. We need to do more research."

This article is adapted from a longer version that appeared in the autumn 2008 issue of Energy Futures, the newsletter of the MIT Energy Initiative.

Schematic of an oscillating water column. Waves enter through a subsurface opening into the chamber with air trapped above. The wave action causes the captured water column to move up and down, pushing the trapped air into an electricity-generating turbine. The turbine turns continuously, despite the changing direction of the air stream as the waves come in and out. (Credit: Graphic courtesy / MIT Energy Initiative)