New emissions rules seen driving "green" success

Chrysler is bankrupt, General Motors is on the verge of bankruptcy and the broader auto industry is in a financial mess. But there are winners emerging from the debris of the industry's implosion. Thanks partly to new standards on emissions, those companies are of a familiar hue: green.
Start-up makers of electric car components, lithium batteries, smart technologies and other products designed to help the United States and other developed countries reduce dependence on gasoline are generating a lot of buzz these days.
http://www.reuters.com/article/smallBusinessNews/idUSTRE54Q31L20090528

Africa plans new strategies to combat climate change

Six months before the crucial negotiations on climate in Copenhagen, African Ministers of Environment meeting here Friday attained a major milestone on the road for combating climate change on the continent.The Nairobi Declaration adopted at the just-ended special session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) on climate change highlighted major challenges and opportunities in the negotiations for a more equitable climate regime.
http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/africa-plans-new-strategies-to-combat-climate-change-2009052928664.html

New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible

A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.
The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090126_climate.html

Man and His Endangered Home

Man – supposedly the most intelligent creature of a species-rich biosphere – has collectively painted himself into a corner: a problematical future of existential dimensions.
Human activities disrupt the life-critical ecological balances. All human life needs food, which in turn requires earth, water, energy and air. In essence, human beings need the earth, but earth actually does not need us.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=8225

How to Prevent Climate Change Summit from Failure

In December 2009, the parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen. Their aim will be to conclude an agreement that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which terminates in 2012. Given the abysmal failure of Kyoto one may be permitted to ask, Will Copenhagen succeed any better? The answer depends on expectations of what can be achieved in this short amount of time; the answer depends on how “success” is defined.
It is easier to define failure. Most climate watchers would define failure to mean lack of an agreement by states to “commit” to limiting their emissions dramatically. I would define failure to mean repeating the mistakes made in Kyoto in 1997. The worst outcome would be for the United States to “commit” to meet quantitative targets and timetables of emission reduction without being sure that these obligations will be approved by Congress.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=12318

Another Blow to Ethanol: Biolectricity Is Greener

Once touted as an environmental and economic cure-all, corn ethanol has had a rough year. The collapse in grain and oil prices, preceded by overinvestment in refineries over the past few years, badly hurt ethanol producers. Meanwhile, environmentalists have steadily chipped away at ethanol's green credentials. Far from being better for the planet than gasoline, many scientists now argue that ethanol actually has a sizable carbon footprint, because when farmers in the U.S. use their land to grow corn for fuel rather than food, farmers in the developing world end up cutting down more forests to pick up the slack.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1896813,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily

The guilty secrets of palm oil: Are you unwittingly contributing to the devastation of the rain forests?

It's an invisible ingredient, really, palm oil. You won't find it listed on your margarine, your bread, your biscuits or your KitKat. It's there though, under "vegetable oil". And its impact, 7,000 miles away, is very visible indeed.
The wildlife-rich forests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being chain-sawed to make way for palm-oil plantations. Thirty square miles are felled daily in a burst of habitat destruction that is taking place on a scale and speed almost unimaginable in the West.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-guilty-secrets-of-palm-oil-are-you-unwittingly-contributing-to-the-devastation-of-the-rain-forests-1676218.html

Climate Change: Case Closed

The debate on global warming is over.
That's the ultimate message from the report released in Paris today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body of leading researchers charged with analyzing climate science and producing the final word on what is happening — and will happen — to our planet. IPCC scientists now say that it is "very likely" that global warming is chiefly driven by the buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases caused by human activity, and that dangerous levels of warming and sea rise are on the way.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1584992,00.html

Cellulosic ethanol suffers in down economy

The economic downturn that has slowed the ethanol industry also is putting the brakes on the next generation of biofuels.Making ethanol from plant cellulose - such as crop residue and wood chips - could help reduce the nation's use of gasoline.Refiners are required by law next year to start using at least 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol. But industry officials acknowledge they will not come close to providing enough of the fuel to meet that target or the targets for subsequent years.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/cellulosic_ethanol_suffers_down_economy

Do the emerging biofuel technologies offer a way around the food-versus-fuel dilemma?

In the struggle to eliminate the possibility of creating a food supply crisis by producing an alternative fuel source from biofuels, scientists and biologists are seeking other sources, so-called ‘second- and third-generation’ biofuels.The development of first-generation biofuels from food sources, such as maize and sunflower oil, was initially hailed as a lower-carbon, renewable fuel source but not long afterwards caused something of a worldwide backlash as the food- versus-fuel debate emerged.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/do_emerging_biofuel_technologies_offer_way_around_food_versus_fuel_dilemma

Turning waste into green energy

A wish for a greener world through sustainable energy prompted Allan Lim, chief executive officer of Alpha Biofuels, to find a viable way to produce energy from community waste.Liquid waste - such as used vegetable oil from restaurants and homes - can be converted into bio-diesel through Alpha's technology and used to power vehicles.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/turning_waste_green_energy

Novel Technology Turns Garbage into Ethanol

Imagine using a dump site to produce a fuel resource. Due to a novel technology developed by a company called BlueFire Ethanol, the cellulosic ethanol within municipal and other waste products could be transformed into an alternative fuel resource. The company has patented a process dubbed “Arkenol” that currently stands as the sole viable cellulose-to-ethanol technique. According to BlueFire, production could be implemented with ethanol coming from wood wastes, urban trash (post-sorted municipal solid waste), rice and wheat straws, and other agricultural residues.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/novel_technology_turns_garbage_ethanol