Skip to content

Tag Archives: greenhouse

Four Simple Steps Towards Energy Independence

Monday, June 23, 2008

It all seems so simple.  All we need to do as a nation is to ween ourselves from over-seas oil.  Here are four simple steps, go tell your elected officials to start getting serious. 

1) Prominently increasing North American energy supplies, thereby increasing energy security (technologies include frontier hydrocarbon technologies such as gasification, including hydrogen production; gas-to-liquids; tar sands, oil sands, and other heavy crude extractive and processing technologies)

2) Providing additional nonhydrocarbon supply options (ethanol1, biodiesel, wind and solar)

3) Moving towards globalizing a regionally limited natural-gas market to reduce risks associated with supply and price (LNG)

4) Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (new emission-free supplies such as nuclear, wind, solar; more efficient end-use technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells and advanced technology vehicles; reduced emissions from hydrocarbon usage such as coal gasification, cogeneration and deployment of CO2 capture and sequestration technologies and strategies).

Filed in Energy-Independence, Green | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

Global change: How do we know?

Saturday, June 14, 2008

The Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about seven thousand years ago, marking the beginning of the modern climate era —and of human civilization. Most of these changes are attributed to the very small changes in the Earth’s orbit changing the amount of solar energy the Earth receives.

“Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. Studying these climate data collected over many years reveal the signals of a changing climate.

Certain facts about Earth’s climate are not in dispute:

The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century. Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth’s orbit, and in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands.

The evidence for abrupt climate change is compelling


read more | digg story

Filed in Global Warming | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)