Welcome ! As a young French Marketing professional with a Master's in International Management I have been selecting since January 2007 the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change, cleantech and the world energy sector. Sounds great ? Don't hesitate to subscribe now !
If traditional / first generation biofuels based on cereals are nowhere near being sustainable, the ones based on algae could be a good or even great solution in the not so far future…
Some entrepreneurs and scientists are sharing this opinion as the New Mexico Business Weekly reports than at least three different companies are working on the very topic in the United States.
Far from being just a solution to keep our car running on liquid fuels, algae could also feed livestocks and so on. Please be sure I will keep you informed on the topic.
If climate change, rising sea levels and the threats to global peace and food production weren’t enough to you, here is another reason to fight carbon dioxide : ocean acidification. To Mongabay :
” Emissions of carbon over the last two centuries have raised the acidity of the oceans to the highest levels in 21,000 years and likely beyond, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change. “
This could have serious implications for marine biodiversity, notably corrals and mollusks. So, what are we waiting for to act ?
To Ecogeek : “ A team of engineers at the University of Illinois have figured out how to create self-healing circuits in electronics and batteries, a discovery that could lead to longer equipment life ”
” As electronics have become more complex, one small circuit failure can render a device useless, especially since it is hard or often impossible to diagnose where that failure occurred to fix it. “
As our smartphones and other computers seem to last less and less, this invention could sure help solving the issues revolving around e-waste.
I blogged two years ago that CCS won’t solve the climate change problem as it is too risky, too expansive, too little and… too late. Joe Romm, the main contributor behind Climate Progress recently noted :
” There are simply too many unanswered questions for anyone to say today that we could rely on large-scale deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage in the 2030s as a major climate solution. “
Since we need to slash our emissions NOW – and certainly not by 2030 – we can see how useless CCS is. We should work on real solutions instead : energy efficiency, sobriety, renewables and nuclear.
I have previously written that the link between extreme weather events and climate change wasn’t clear. It isn’t the case anymore as the latest research from the IPCC proves. As Cleantechies notes :
” A new report says that an increase in heat waves is “virtually certain” as a result of global warming and that extreme weather events — including hurricanes, floods, and droughts — will likely become more intense in the next century. “
” The IPCC’s “special report on extreme weather,” (…) urges governments worldwide to draft plans to minimize the likely human and economic costs of these events. “
I don’t talk about food often here. However, with so many starving people around the world, I should talk more about agricultural advances as feeding nine billion people by 2050 will be the biggest challenge ever faced.
To Ecogeek : ” A new type of rice (from) the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bangalore, India has many advantages over typical rice varieties. It requires less water to grow, it’s higher in protein and it emits less methane over its life cycle. ”
” This rice, which is not genetically modified but a hybrid crop, uses 60 percent less water than conventional rice crops. It only needs to be watered once a week even in arid climates.”
This is what arises as the Arctic is melting much faster than the IPCC predicted in its report in 2007. ( I had blogged much about their findings during my first year of blogging here)
As Climate Progress notes : ” Far from being “alarmist,” predictions from climate scientists in many cases are proving to be more conservative than observed climate-induced impacts. “
So we thought the situation was horrible ? No problem, it is just turning even worse ! The fact we aren’t even really trying to avoid all this literally boggles my mind…
Everybody loves chocolate but to TreeHugger : “ The world’s cocoa supply could be in danger from climate change, according to a new study from the CIAT, which says that prices are likely to skyrocket if preventative measures aren’t taken.”
” The report predicts that the expected temperature increase of more than two degrees by 2050 will leave many cocoa-producing areas in West Africa too hot to continue growing the crop. And the report says the decline could begin as soon as 2030.”
Of course the impact of climate change on chocolate harvests is trivial in comparison to what it could mean for all of us and our very civilization. But nonetheless, I consider this should motivate people to do more…
This is not surprising as I was blogging about it two months ago. To TreeHugger : ” After several months of reporting near-record or record monthly levels of Arctic sea ice melting, German researchers now report that a new yearly record low has been set.”
” The area covered by Arctic sea ice has declined to its lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1972. ” It’s also probably lower than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the researchers say. ”
” (…) One day before the German measurement was made, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that the average ice extent for August was 28% below the average for 1979-2000 “
Here are some stunning news. To TreeHugger : ” Scientists have just completed the most accurate tally of the planet’s species yet (though the projection still has a pretty healthy margin of error). The magic number?”
” 8.7 million, according to the study, which was recently published in the journal PLoS Biology. But the amazing thing is, we’ve only actually ‘discovered’ 86% of them – and thousands of them will be extinct before we do. “
Oddly enough, despite oceans are covering over 70 percent of our planet, there are home to less than a third of all species… This can be explained by the huge amounts of insects on land. Continue »
