“China’s Toxic Sky”
A bright video screen shows images of blue sky on Tiananmen Square during a time of dangerous levels of air pollution, on January 23, 2013 in Beijing.
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That’s just sad.
We need a better process to reverse-engineer cars. I’ve commented on similar posts about this topic of automotive-related waste but it’s a huge resource of materials that can be properly recycled (glass, metals, plastics, textiles) and then re-used.
Currently, this is conventional method of how we deal with cars that have met the end of their product lifecycle.
We can do much better….we have to.
Kelly McParland: China is choking on its environmental complacency
It’s not very nice to enjoy other people’s misery, but when it comes to smog in China a certain schadenfreude sets in.
China has been most forthright in criticizing other countries for failing to pay adequate attention to the environment , while continuing to burn ever-increasing amounts of coal and letting the result turn the atmosphere into a floating gray mass of pollutants that choke the population.
The Chinese capital is going through another air emergency at the moment, and this one is setting record levels. According to the World Health Organization, a “safe” level of PM2.5 particles — tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs — is 25 micrograms per cubic metre. On Saturday, levels in Beijing hit 600, and perhaps as high as 900. That’s between 24 and 36 times the “safe level.” Beijing is now the modern equivalent of Victorian London, whose famous “fog” was actually smog caused by coal dust that was disastrous for the health of Londoners.
People are now walking through the Lincoln Tunnel because SANDY HAS LEFT US WITH SO LITTLE FUCKS TO GIVE.
Yup. We just started waltzing off the bus today somewhere on the west side because, you know, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO.
Keita Ogawa - Melt Bulb
The idea behind the design of these melting LED bulbs is to remind people of how we unnecessarily waste energy. They resemble melting ice which symbolises global warming.
(via dead-until-dark)
High Water In Venice:
More than 59% of Venice has been been left flooded, after the historic town was hit by exceptionally high tides.
The sea level rose above 140cm overnight was expected to remain above critical levels for about 15 hours.
Photos by Marco Secchi/Getty Images
(via fluorescentlyadolescent)
Scientists successfully generate gasoline out of thin air
Breakthrough technology takes carbon, hydrogen and oxygen from CO2 and water in the air to create methanol and then converts it into gasoline.We’ll never hear about this again. And we may never hear from those scientists again.
Amazing though.
Big Oil’s gonna be piiiiiiiiissed
Somebody go put these folks in the witness protection program before they get hits put on them by ExxonMobil
just in time for me to get my first whip
PUT THIS EVERYWHERE.
Now HERE’S a post that needs 4 million notes!
EVERYBODY REBLOG
(via always-have-a-towel)
As Hurricane Sandy heads toward land on the East Coast, the storm and its aftermath could lend an interesting twist to the upcoming general election–call it the “October surprise”–as some power outages could last into Election Day.
Hurricane Sandy’s track is projected to directly affect two swing states in the election—Pennsylvania and Virginia—with Ohio also in the storm’s path inward.
The storm will arrive about a week before Election Day, and widespread, long-term power outages are a possibility, based on recent trends and the severity of the storm.
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This just got interesting.
Polls are indicating that, due to early voting, Obama has a slight lead over Romney.
And Romney is hedging his bets that winning Ohio will win him the presidency as he’s investing heavily in the state with advertising and campaigning. This storm will play precarious odds in determining if people will get to cast their vote for either candidate.
So, in essence, Sandy, an act of God if you want to call it that, may very well help determine the outcome of who will be in the White House the next 4 years.
“Hybrid of Sandy, winter storm threatens East Coast”
Government forecasters say a big storm that they’re calling “Frankenstorm” is likely to blast most of the U.S. East Coast next week.
The storm is an unusual mix of a hurricane and a winter storm. The worst of it could be focused around New York City and New Jersey.
Forecasters on Thursday said there’s a 90 percent chance that the East will get steady gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Wednesday.
The hurricane part of the storm is likely to come ashore somewhere in New Jersey on Tuesday morning.
NOAA forecaster Jim Cisco said the storm is so massive that the effects will be felt along the entire coast from Florida to Maine and inland to Ohio.
UK Researchers Create Gasoline Out of Thin Air and Water
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of a gallon of gas has risen to $3.82 last month from $1.17 just 10 years ago, and there does not seem to be an end in sight to that rise. And, as we are running out of fossil fuels, global warming, due largely in part to carbon emissions, is becoming an increasing problem. Now, a small company in the United Kingdom has perhaps hit upon the holy grail of clean energy: they have managed to convert water and air into petroleum.
Air Fuel Synthesis has been working on the project since August. Using a small refinery, they have manufactured five liters (1.3 gallons) of petroleum from the carbon dioxide in water and air, with none of the additives like sulfur. The process extracts carbon dioxide and combines it in a reactor which, along with a catalyst, creates methanol. The methanol is then converted into petroleum.
“Honda sells millionth hybrid 13 years after first introducing Insight”
Remember when selling 100,000 hybrids was something to tout? Today, Honda comes calling with the news that, since putting its first-gen Insight on sale in 1999, the company has sold more than a million hybrids around the world.
Clearly, the company’s gas-electric sales pace is quickening – it took Honda until 2005 to sell its first 100,000. At the time, only the Insight, Civic Hybrid and Accord Hybrid were available. By 2007, with no new models added to the list, another 100,000 had been sold. Honda introduced the second-gen Insight in 2009 and the CR-Z and Fit Hybrid in 2010. By December of that year, the company had cleared its decks of 600,000 units, and the pace of new introductions was about to increase. 2011 saw three new hybrid models (in Japan only), the Fit Shuttle, Freed and Freed Spike. This year, Acura introduced the ILX Hybrid in the US and Canada and, last month, after almost 13 years of offering hybrids, cumulative sales for the two brands hit seven digits. The US is responsible for 318,000 of those. Next year, a new Accord gas-electric and Accord Plug-In Hybrid will arrive with improved powertrains.
To compare, the world’s hybrid leader, Toyota, is now making and selling over a million hybrids a year and has sold over four million through the years. That’s impressive, but let’s remember that it’s taken over a decade for Honda and Toyota to reach these numbers, which can help put the White House’s goal of having one million plug-ins on the road by 2015 into perspective.
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This automotive news is a bit under the radar but does bring to light the gradual shift of society’s perspective regarding the relationship between our cars and energy.
It’s not something which happens overnight to invest in tooling and R&D to bring such cars to market. It could be argued as being the result of a successful marketing ploy or a scare tactic regarding climate change but one thing is certain in that manufacturers are answering the demand for alternatively powered vehicles.
The manufacturers may or may not truly possess the altruistic attributes concerning the welfare of the environment but do care about their own survival. So, the good thing is that if enough people want change, there are companies willing to grant it. Because, if there does end up being a shortage of crude oil for refining into gasoline, these manufacturers will at least have a head start in adapting to what will be a rapidly changing marketplace.
Rising gas prices in the ‘70’s helped to spur not only the development of the Honda Civic and VW Rabbit but their popularity as well. It seems now that history is repeating itself which is unfortunate that we haven’t learned from it.
“Arctic melt opens door for big oil’s next boom”
In these Alaskan waters of the High North, sea ice has melted at a record pace this summer, shattering a record set in 2007 and marking the greatest Arctic melt since scientists began monitoring it by satellite in 1979. Some scientists calculate it is the greatest melt in the history of humankind, and there is little disagreement that it poses a perilous development for the planet.
For Royal Dutch Shell and other oil companies, this melt is serving to open up the once ice-locked waterways that big oil will need to set up drilling platforms and staging areas to pull the crude and natural gas up from beneath the ocean’s floor.
Shell spent four grueling years wrestling with federal bureaucracy and state politics and it sunk $4.5 billion to secure offshore lease holds over what geologists believe is a motherlode of crude in the rush for oil and minerals that is well underway here at the top of the world.
The historic melt has opened a battle that has the eight nations of the Arctic Circle — the US, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Finland — all jostling for power and influence in the Arctic over what investment bankers view as the world’s last, great emerging economy.
There’s not just oil and natural gas, but also minerals including platinum, zinc, nickel and gold. There is the precious commodity of fresh drinking water. At stake are potentially trillions of dollars in profits. Also at stake are geo-political security in a time of diminishing resources, a delicate ecosystem that is crucial in cooling the planet and the traditional way of life for a native people who have everything to lose, and much to gain.
“We’re worried. This is our home and these waters are our fields where we harvest our food. This isn’t just a staging area for Shell, this is our home, and it is all about to change,” says Patkotak.
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Just seeing the commercial exploitation in global communities that have a wealth of natural resources and not much else in the way of sustaining their way of life is only telling that the outcome will not be positive for the residents in the Arctic region.
Even in our ‘developed’ country, BP has not been proactive in helping to restore the Gulf of Mexico after the disaster there 2 years ago hoping instead that time will help to fade any memories away. The fact of the matter is that there are still remnants of oil in marshes and countless families who had to adopt new sources of income when their small, family businesses ended up failing.
These large companies have invested very little in any technology to clean up after themselves only to assume that nature will do the job.
It’s even more disconcerting when the ‘leader of the free world’ has a role in allowing this to happen.
(via drpamelalillianisley)
