Solar power is measured by insolation. The insolation rating of a particular area is the amount of solar radiation to hit the ground in a specific time period. This is usually figured in terms of kilowatt-hours per square meter per day (kWh/m2/day). A high insolation rating is a good indicator of a town"s potential for supplementing traditional power plants with solar energy.
Reposted from Curiosity.com
An action thriller by Jock Miller
Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.
The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.
The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.
The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.
Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.
Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?
Can renewable forms of energy replace fossil fuels?
Well, remember, efficiency comes first. So we quit the waste. As soon as you quit the waste, then your energy demand drops in the rich countries and flatlines in the developing countries. That's a manageable problem. If you have dropping energy demand, you can make carbon drop even faster by a steady substitution of renewable fuels.
If you have flat energy demand, which they would in China, for example, then you can start chewing away at that with new renewables. But you've bought yourself the time to introduce those renewable on a mass scale. It's no longer a panic situation.
Reposted from Curiosity.com
New Dinosaur a Prehistoric Turkey?
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| An artist's impression of the newly-discovered dinosaur, called Hagryphus. Photo: Michael Skrepnick |
Fossils from a new species of birdlike dinosaur resembling a 2.1 metre brightly coloured turkey and which could run at up to 40 kph have been found in southern Utah.
Fossils of the meat-eater's hand-like claw and foot found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near the Arizona border in Utah, give paleontologists reason to believe some dinosaurs known as raptors roamed from Canada to northern New Mexico about 75 million years ago.
The dinosaur had a strong toothless beak, powerful arms and formidable claws that made it capable of eating animals and plants. Large feathers grew on its hind end, giving it a resemblance to a turkey, Zanno said today.
Scientists are not sure what purpose the feathers served, but it was not for flying. "It's quite different from modern birds," she said.
Read more
As Jet Fuel Prices Soar, a Green Option Nears the Runway
Aviation is making an important step in breaking free of its petroleum dependence through biofuel.
The ethanol that is typically used in cars—fuel alcohol refined from grain or sugar cane—would not work in aviation, at least with today's jet engines, because its energy density (the power it packs per gallon or liter) is too low. But numerous start-up companies around the world have been working with a very different fuel derived from oils that have been extracted from plants, animal fat, or grease. The oils are treated with hydrogen to produce HRJ, synthetic kerosene that is chemically the same as jet fuel. Only carbon dating would reveal that it is not made from fossil fuel.
Read more
 |
In
March 2011, a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor powered by a 50-50 blend of
renewable and petroleum jet fuel flew at supersonic speed from Edwards
Air Force Base in California. The important test helped prove the fuel's
viability.
Photograph courtesy Kevin North, US Air Force
|
Read more
Palentologist: Annie M. Alexander
Annie Alexander (1867 – 1950) Annie M. Alexander was born in Hawaii into a wealthy family of sugarcane growers and refiners, was educated in California and Europe, and spent much of her life adventuring across the globe. After sitting in on some lectures given by Berkeley paleontologist John Merriam, Alexander became acutely interested in the subject and funded several fossil hunting expeditions across the United States, on the condition that she could join the parties.
Alexander’s importance as a patron of the sciences could hardly be over-exaggerated. She endowed what would ultimately become the University of California Museum of Paleontology, as well as the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology both located on the Berkeley campus of the University of California and both which remain important research institutions. In addition to her philanthropic work, Alexander was a talented naturalist and collected numerous fossil, zoological and botanical specimens for the museums that she founded. Some 17 species or subspecies, extinct and extant, bear her name including three marine reptiles Thalattosaurus alexandrae , (see below) Hydrotherosaurus alexadrae and Shastasaurus alexandrae (though the later is now considered to be a junior synonym of S. pacificus).
Thalattosaurus alexandrae
Thalattosaurs (meaning "ocean lizards") are a group of prehistoric marine reptiles which lived during the mid-late Triassic Period. Some species of thalattosaur grew to over 4 metres (13 feet) in length, including a long, flattened tail used in underwater propulsion. While they bore a superficial resemblance to lizards.
More on Why do two dragons sleep soundly?
The little crow-sized troodontid dinosaur, Mei long (meaning “soundly sleeping dragon”) was more aptly named than Xu and Norell (2004) originally realized. Now, Chunling Gao and colleages (2012) have reported their discovery of a second fully articulated specimen preserved in the posture characteristically adopted by many modern birds while they sleep: neck curved around sideways, head tucked in behind a wing, legs folded under body and (something of which modern birds are incapable, with their truncated pygostyle) long tail wrapped around the body. The only significant difference in posture between the two animals is that the new one’s (DNHM D2154) neck is bent in the opposite direction to that in the first specimen (IVPP V12733). Xu and Norell (2004) had suggested that as in modern birds, this compact body configuration minimizes the ratio of surface area to volume, thereby enhancing body heat retention, which is a significant challenge to such small homeothermic (warm blooded) animals.
Despite the fact that these fossils were found in the volcaniclastic (volcanic ash deposit) sediments of the Yixian formation, which facilitate extremely fine preservation, fossilization is a very spotty process (only two such beautiful Mei specimens are known so far). So it seems statistically unlikely that both specimens (and a partial Sinornithoides) would be found in this sleeping posture unless death and the posture were somehow related. But how?
Gao et al. (2012) point out that not all the victims of Pompei (who were similarly covered by ash as Mei) display the hyperflexion (clenching) of muscles that results from death by high temperature ash falls and fire. Therefore, (assuming that theropods such as Mei display similar neuromuscular responses to heat as do mammals) it isn’t unreasonable to surmise that the specimens of Mei died by asphyxiation from toxic volcanic gases while sleeping instead of being roasted. In this scenario, the volcanic eruptions that killed and buried the animals may have occurred during the sleeping period, and therefore represents a kind of snapshot of ‘normal’ life in this prehistoric ecosystem.
Alternatively, Gao et al. (2012) have suggested that perhaps the preserved brooding posture of Mei represents either (1) sheltering behaviour within a burrow (which may have constrained the position of the body and prevented the kind of opisthotonic neck-twisted-up-over-back posture that characterizes many dinosaur skeletons and which has been proposed to results from either a neurolomuscular response to toxins or agony, or postmortem contraction of neck ligaments), or (2) a defensive postural response to volcanic events such as ash fall. In this last case, the volcanic event may have directly influenced the preserved postures of some of the fossils that are found in its resulting sediments. In the sketch above, I have chosen to illustrate Mei curled up under a relatively cooler ash fall, and the hapless creature has been asphyxiated, either in its sleep or in a defensive posture.
The multiplicity of possible explanations for the brooding posture of Mei and the likelihood of the fossilization process to influence the behaviour of the animals that it preserves underscores the daunting and complex task facing paleontologists who strive to piece together the puzzle of prehistoric ecosystems from relatively few pieces left to them sometimes by catastrophic events.
Reposted from Evolutionary Routes
Flying Wind Turbines Reach for High-Altitude Power: Circling to Get Ahead
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| Photograph courtesy Doug Selsam |
The KiteGen power kite is designed to fly in figure-eight patterns, according to illustrations on the company website.
Another pioneering system that has garnered some attention has been under development since 2005 by Kanata, Canada-based Magenn Power. Its 100-kW device, the Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS), is a helium-filled mini blimp designed to float up to 1,000 feet (305 meters). (A land-based wind turbine of that capacity would be considered among the largest of small wind turbines.)
Wind makes the blimp's cylindrical core rotate around a horizontal axis, which generates electricity. The juice is then sent down the tether, according to the company.
Magenn claims the helium keeps the device especially stable in high-altitude winds, and says it has met U.S. Federal Aviation Administration guidelines for safety. Company marketing materials promote the product as ideal for remote applications like oil rigs and wilderness cabins, although it has not been released yet.
Some are skeptical of the company's claims. Alternative wind turbine designer Doug Selsam says the MARS system "takes the least efficient turbine type known and makes it more expensive and less efficient, by taking it into the air, with the balloon vastly increasing swept area without increasing power."
Magenn did not respond to a request for comment left on the company's Canadian headquarters answering system. The U.S. phone number listed on the company's website is disconnected.
Read more
How Did Dinosaurs Sleep?
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| A second specimen of the troodontid Mei, preserved in a bird-like sleeping position. From Gao et al., 2012. |
For one thing, we don’t know much at all about how dinosaurs slept. Did Apatosaurus doze standing up or kneel down to rest? Did tyrannosaurs use their tiny, muscular arms to push themselves off the ground after a nap? And, given the discovery of so many enfluffled dinosaurs, did fuzzy dinosaurs ever cuddle up together to stay warm on chilly Mesozoic nights?
Since we can’t observe living non-avian dinosaurs directly, some of these questions have to remain in the realm of speculation. But a handful of fossils have shown us that at least some dinosaurs curled up just like birds. In 2004, Xing Xu and Mark Norell described the tiny, early Cretaceous dinosaur Mei long–a feathery troodontid dinosaur with big eyes and a little switchblade claw on each foot. What made Mei special, though, was the way the dinosaur was preserved.
Many articulated dinosaur skeletons are found in the classic dinosaur death pose, with their tails tilted up and their necks thrown over their backs. The nearly-complete skeleton of Mei was different. The foot-long dinosaur rested its head over its folded arms, and its tail wrapped around the dinosaur’s torso. Mei died sleeping in a roosting position similar to that of modern birds. The dinosaur’s name, which means “sleeping dragon,” is a tribute to the behavior.
Now another Mei specimen has confirmed that the first find was not a fluke. Last week, paleontologist Chunling Gao, of the Dalian Natural History Museum in China, and colleagues described a second, slightly smaller Mei that was preserved in a nearly identical sleeping position. Much like the first, this Mei probably died in a prehistoric ashfall that both killed and preserved the dinosaur in delicate detail without jarring the snoozing troodontid out of position. Some feathery, non-avian dinosaurs not only looked like birds, but they slept like them, too.
The two Mei specimens aren’t the only dinosaurs found in such positions. Gao and colleagues also point out that a specimen of another troodontid found in the Cretaceous rock of Mongolia, Sinornithoides youngi, was found in the same sort of sleeping position. And while not mentioned by the authors of the new study, the sleeping positions of Mei and Sinornithoides remind me of the early Jurassic dinosaur Segisaurus. Described in 1936, the partial skeleton of Segisaurus was found with its legs tucked beneath its body and arms apparently in a resting position. Perhaps this dinosaur, too, died while dozing, and records an even older record of how dinosaurs rested. Such glimpses are rare, but they help fill in some of the most elusive moments in Mesozoic history.
Reposted from Smithsonian Magazine
Book Hostage Promotes Fossil River
Book Promotion: Fossil River by Jock Miller
Today’s book promotion comes from Jock Miller and his book called Fossil River. If you like science fiction, take a look below. You might just find another book for your “to read” pile!
Author: Jock Miller
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Story Merchant Books
Format: Paperback and eBook
Released: May 21, 2012
Summary:
From the publisher of Careers & The disABLEd Magazine, Jock Miller, comes an action-packed thriller set in the wilderness of Northern Alaska, Fossil River. The main characters– a wounded warrior Marine from the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a the brilliant curator of NY’s Museum of Natural History, along with her teenage son and his girlfriend–pitted against a colony of living fossils, which happen to be the most vicious predators that ever walked the earth.
Will the nation be plunged into darkness because the United States cannot get access to the largest fossil fuel deposit in the world in time to prevent the lights and mobility fuel from being extinguished, plunging the nation into utter financial ruin and darkness? Will they survive?
Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.
The world’s largest fossil fuel deposit is discovered in a remote mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve.
Preventing access to it is a colony of living dinosaurs–protecting its territory to the death as the nation’s lights are about to extinguish. Will the nation go dark or will the US Military succeed in gaining access in time to save the nation from utter disaster.
Jock Miller received a BS degree in Zoology from Ohio Wesleyan University. Focus of study: paleontology, ornithology, and comparative anatomy. He attended Harvard Business School to participate in a case study publishing management program sponsored by the American Business Press.
Before starting his own publishing company, Miller served as Director of Marketing and Sales Service for Billboard Publications, Inc, then Director of Circulation for the twelve magazine publishing company. Miller has appeared on cable TV talk shows, been interviewed on numerous radio talk shows and interviewed live on the Today Show by Barbara Walters. He has been a guest lecturer at C.W. Post College, and C.W. Post Brentwood Campus, lecturing on industry’s responsibility to society and its community.
Miller is Director Emeritus of The First National Bank of Long Island where he served on the Board for twenty-three years. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Middleby Company as Chairman of the Compensation Committee. He is past President of the Boards of The Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum and The Huntington Arts Council, and served on the Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery Board of Directors. He has served as an Elder and Deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Huntington.
Miller has received the Pericles Award for his work promoting people with disAbilites, Wounded Warriors, Minorities and Women into the workforce through his company, EOP, Inc. (www.Eop.com). He is also the recipient of the Valley Forge Honor Certificate recognizing his contribution to a free society.
His hobbies are fly fishing, writing novels, playing the bag pipes and the piano. Miller is an amateur radio operator, K2MUS.
~
I want to thank Jock Miler for allowing me to promote his book on my blog. I hope this post has inspired you to go out and read Fossil River!
Reposted from Book Hostage
Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy
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| Evergreen... Sweden will develop biofuels from its forests. Photograph: Mattias Klum/Getty Images |
Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.
The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.
The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.
"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."
According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern that global oil supplies are peaking and will shortly dwindle, and that a global economic recession could result from high oil prices.
Ms Sahlin has described oil dependency as one of the greatest problems facing the world. "A Sweden free of fossil fuels would give us enormous advantages, not least by reducing the impact from fluctuations in oil prices," she said. "The price of oil has tripled since 1996."
A government official said: "We want to be both mentally and technically prepared for a world without oil. The plan is a response to global climate change, rising petroleum prices and warnings by some experts that the world may soon be running out of oil."
Sweden, which was badly hit by the oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat. A 1980 referendum decided that nuclear power should be phased out, but this has still not been finalised.
The decision to abandon oil puts Sweden at the top of the world green league table. Iceland hopes by 2050 to power all its cars and boats with hydrogen made from electricity drawn from renewable resources, and Brazil intends to power 80% of its transport fleet with ethanol derived mainly from sugar cane within five years.
Last week George Bush surprised analysts by saying that the US was addicted to oil and should greatly reduce imports from the Middle East. The US now plans a large increase in nuclear power.
The British government, which is committed to generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2012, last month launched an energy review which has a specific remit to consider a large increase in nuclear power. But a report by accountants Ernst & Young yesterday said that the UK was falling behind in its attempt to meet its renewables target.
"The UK has Europe's best wind, wave and tidal resources yet it continues to miss out on its economic potential," said Jonathan Johns, head of renewable energy at Ernst & Young.
Energy ministry officials in Sweden said they expected the oil committee to recommend further development of biofuels derived from its massive forests, and by expanding other renewable energies such as wind and wave power.
Sweden has a head start over most countries. In 2003, 26% of all the energy consumed came from renewable sources - the EU average is 6%. Only 32% of the energy came from oil - down from 77% in 1970.
The Swedish government is working with carmakers Saab and Volvo to develop cars and lorries that burn ethanol and other biofuels. Last year the Swedish energy agency said it planned to get the public sector to move out of oil. Its health and library services are being given grants to convert from oil use and homeowners are being encouraged with green taxes. The paper and pulp industries use bark to produce energy, and sawmills burn wood chips and sawdust to generate power.
Reposted from The Guardian
Feathery Ostrich Mimics Enfluffle the Dinosaur Family Tree
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| Not only was Ornithomimus feathered, but the dinosaur’s fluffy coat changed as it aged. Lovely art by Julius Csotonyi. |
University of Calgary paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky adds another enfluffled species to the dinosaurian ranks. Even better, the specimens raise hopes that many more dinosaurs might be preserved with their feathery coats intact.
Zelenitsky’s downy dinosaurs are not newly discovered species. Ornithomimus edmontonicus was initially described by famed bone hunter C.H. Sternberg in 1933, and it is one of the characteristic Late Cretaceous species found in Alberta, Canada’s fossil-rich Horseshoe Canyon Formation. In Sternberg’s time, these dinosaurs were thought to be scaly, but recent finds of so many feathery dinosaurs has raised the likeliehood that the “ostrich mimic” dinosaur was at least coated in some sort of dinofuzz.
Read more
Harbin Smog Crisis Highlights China’s Coal Problem
Christina Nunez
Choked with smog that shut down roads, schools, and its main airport, the city of Harbin (map) this week offered a striking reminder that China has a long way to go in addressing the hazards caused by its dependence on coal.
Visibility in the northeastern city of more than 10 million people reportedly was reduced in places to less than 65 feet (20 meters) as coal-fired heating systems ramped up for the winter months. Officials also pointed to farmers burning crop stubble and low winds as additional causes for the pollution crisis.
Harbin, also known as the Ice City, hosts an ice and snow festival every year that features displays of elaborate ice sculptures. But the city's frigid temperatures, which can reach -40ºF (-40º C) in winter, mean that residences usually need heating for six months of the year. As part of a national effort to reduce energy intensity, Harbin in 2010 spent $1.1 million to retrofit 21 million square feet (2 million square meters) of residential buildings—adding five new layers of wall insulation, as well as better windows and roofing. (See related story: "In China's Icy North, Outfitting Buildings to Save Energy.")
But building retrofits can go only so far in a country where coal fuels 70 percent of the energy consumption. China, the world's largest consumer of coal, is also the world's leader in carbon emissions. (See related interactive map: "Four Ways to Look at Global Carbon Footprints.") Those emissions have stark consequences for the country's residents, a fact highlighted in two recent studies that measured the health impacts of fossil fuel emissions.
Deadly Pollution Problems
The level of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, in Harbin's air this week reportedly reached 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter, exceeding the World Health Organization's daily target level by a factor of 40. While Harbin's predicament is alarming, it is not isolated; many cities in Northern China, including the capital Beijing and neighboring Tianjin, rank among the most polluted in the world. In January, Beijing made headlines when its air quality got so bad that it went beyond the very top of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in July found that air pollution has caused the loss of more than 2.5 billion years of life expectancy in China. Because of a government policy that provided free coal for home and office heating to residents of the north from 1950 to 1980, life expectancy there was 5.5 years shorter than in southern China in the 1990s. That disparity persists today, researchers say, almost entirely because of heart and lung disease related to air pollution from the burning of coal. (See related story: "Coal Burning Shortens Lives in China, New Study Shows.")
Bill Chameides of Duke University's Nicholas School for the Environment led two air quality studies in China's Yangtze Delta between 1995 and 2004. "Hearing about Harbin's smog problems, I couldn't help but think back [to those studies]," Chameides said via e-mail Tuesday. "It was really bad then. Everywhere I went in China the sky was covered with a smoggy, foggy gray blanket. A cab driver told me, tongue in cheek, that while dogs howl once a month at night at the moon, in China they howl once a month during the day-because that's how often the sun comes out."
A separate study released last month found that if the world took action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, more than 500,000 lives could be saved globally each year. The air and health quality benefits for East Asia alone would add up to between 10 and 70 times the cost of reducing emissions by 2030, researchers said. (See related story: "Climate Change Action Could Save 500,000 Lives Annually, Study Says.")
Growth, at a Cost
The challenge to improve heating infrastructure and improve efficiency for millions of square feet within existing buildings is made even more formidable by the fact that China is currently adding some 22 billion new square feet (2 billion square meters) of construction per year. At the same time, living standards are increasing, creating demand for ever more power; and coal remains subsidized, meaning that consumers don't see the fuel's true cost in their heating prices. (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Home Heating.")
China did earlier this year announce a ban on new coal plants in three industrial regions near Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, citing air quality problems. (See related blog post by Chameides: "China Puts Kibosh on New Coal Plants (in Three Regions).")
The government has also approved at least nine large-scale projects that would turn coal into synthetic natural gas (SNG), a strategy that may help ease China's air pollution woes but create more environmental problems than it solves. "In terms of mitigating smog in eastern China, replacing coal with SNG indeed can help quite a bit," said Chi-Jen Yang, a researcher at Duke, in an e-mail Tuesday. Yang co-authored a recent paper on the topic in Nature Climate Change, noting that SNG produces greenhouse gas emissions seven times that of conventional natural gas while requiring vast amounts of water.
"I understand that to the Chinese government, smog is probably more urgent than global warming, which explains their policy [favoring SNG]," Yang said. "I am just warning that their near-sighted policy will lock them into a long-term unsustainable path of development."
Yang's warning underscores a larger truth echoed by Chameides: Though China's energy decisions are being felt most keenly right now by those in Harbin and cities like it, the longer-term effects reverberate far beyond its borders. "When you think about how important China's economy is to the U.S. consumer, indeed to the whole world," said Chameides, "China's pollution is a threat to us all."
—Additional reporting by Marianne Lavelle and Te-Ping Chen
Reposted from National Geographics
 |
A traffic policeman signals to drivers Monday in
Harbin, China, where smog grew so thick that roads had to be closed.
Winter heating systems fired by coal are being blamed, in part, for the
crisis.
Photograph by China Daily, Reuters
|
Choked with smog that shut down roads, schools, and its main airport, the city of Harbin (map) this week offered a striking reminder that China has a long way to go in addressing the hazards caused by its dependence on coal.
Visibility in the northeastern city of more than 10 million people reportedly was reduced in places to less than 65 feet (20 meters) as coal-fired heating systems ramped up for the winter months. Officials also pointed to farmers burning crop stubble and low winds as additional causes for the pollution crisis.
Harbin, also known as the Ice City, hosts an ice and snow festival every year that features displays of elaborate ice sculptures. But the city's frigid temperatures, which can reach -40ºF (-40º C) in winter, mean that residences usually need heating for six months of the year. As part of a national effort to reduce energy intensity, Harbin in 2010 spent $1.1 million to retrofit 21 million square feet (2 million square meters) of residential buildings—adding five new layers of wall insulation, as well as better windows and roofing. (See related story: "In China's Icy North, Outfitting Buildings to Save Energy.")
But building retrofits can go only so far in a country where coal fuels 70 percent of the energy consumption. China, the world's largest consumer of coal, is also the world's leader in carbon emissions. (See related interactive map: "Four Ways to Look at Global Carbon Footprints.") Those emissions have stark consequences for the country's residents, a fact highlighted in two recent studies that measured the health impacts of fossil fuel emissions.
Deadly Pollution Problems
The level of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, in Harbin's air this week reportedly reached 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter, exceeding the World Health Organization's daily target level by a factor of 40. While Harbin's predicament is alarming, it is not isolated; many cities in Northern China, including the capital Beijing and neighboring Tianjin, rank among the most polluted in the world. In January, Beijing made headlines when its air quality got so bad that it went beyond the very top of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in July found that air pollution has caused the loss of more than 2.5 billion years of life expectancy in China. Because of a government policy that provided free coal for home and office heating to residents of the north from 1950 to 1980, life expectancy there was 5.5 years shorter than in southern China in the 1990s. That disparity persists today, researchers say, almost entirely because of heart and lung disease related to air pollution from the burning of coal. (See related story: "Coal Burning Shortens Lives in China, New Study Shows.")
Bill Chameides of Duke University's Nicholas School for the Environment led two air quality studies in China's Yangtze Delta between 1995 and 2004. "Hearing about Harbin's smog problems, I couldn't help but think back [to those studies]," Chameides said via e-mail Tuesday. "It was really bad then. Everywhere I went in China the sky was covered with a smoggy, foggy gray blanket. A cab driver told me, tongue in cheek, that while dogs howl once a month at night at the moon, in China they howl once a month during the day-because that's how often the sun comes out."
A separate study released last month found that if the world took action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, more than 500,000 lives could be saved globally each year. The air and health quality benefits for East Asia alone would add up to between 10 and 70 times the cost of reducing emissions by 2030, researchers said. (See related story: "Climate Change Action Could Save 500,000 Lives Annually, Study Says.")
Growth, at a Cost
The challenge to improve heating infrastructure and improve efficiency for millions of square feet within existing buildings is made even more formidable by the fact that China is currently adding some 22 billion new square feet (2 billion square meters) of construction per year. At the same time, living standards are increasing, creating demand for ever more power; and coal remains subsidized, meaning that consumers don't see the fuel's true cost in their heating prices. (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Home Heating.")
China did earlier this year announce a ban on new coal plants in three industrial regions near Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, citing air quality problems. (See related blog post by Chameides: "China Puts Kibosh on New Coal Plants (in Three Regions).")
The government has also approved at least nine large-scale projects that would turn coal into synthetic natural gas (SNG), a strategy that may help ease China's air pollution woes but create more environmental problems than it solves. "In terms of mitigating smog in eastern China, replacing coal with SNG indeed can help quite a bit," said Chi-Jen Yang, a researcher at Duke, in an e-mail Tuesday. Yang co-authored a recent paper on the topic in Nature Climate Change, noting that SNG produces greenhouse gas emissions seven times that of conventional natural gas while requiring vast amounts of water.
"I understand that to the Chinese government, smog is probably more urgent than global warming, which explains their policy [favoring SNG]," Yang said. "I am just warning that their near-sighted policy will lock them into a long-term unsustainable path of development."
Yang's warning underscores a larger truth echoed by Chameides: Though China's energy decisions are being felt most keenly right now by those in Harbin and cities like it, the longer-term effects reverberate far beyond its borders. "When you think about how important China's economy is to the U.S. consumer, indeed to the whole world," said Chameides, "China's pollution is a threat to us all."
—Additional reporting by Marianne Lavelle and Te-Ping Chen
Reposted from National Geographics
Spinach power has just gotten a big boost.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University have developed a way to combine the photosynthetic protein that converts light into electrochemical energy in spinach with silicon, the material used in solar cells, in a fashion that produces substantially more electrical current than has been reported by previous "biohybrid" solar cells.
How did feathered dinosaurs take to the air?
 | ||
Archaeopteryx had a wing that was different from that of modern birds, and, as seen here, might have been a glider more than a powered flyer. Art by Carl Buell, courtesy of Nicholas Longrich.
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Paleontologists have been investigating and debating this essential aspect of avian evolution for over a century. Indeed, there have been almost as many ideas as they have been experts, envisioning scenarios of dinosaurs gliding through trees, theropods trapping insects with their feathery wings and even aquatic Iguanodon flapping primitive flippers as flight precursors (I didn’t say that all the ideas were good ones). The biomechanical abilities of bird ancestors and their natural history has always been at the center of the debate, and a new Current Biology paper adds more fuel to the long-running discussion.
At present, hypotheses for the origin of avian flight typically fall into one of two categories. Either bird ancestors accrued the adaptations necessary for flight on the ground and, through evolutionary happenstance, were eventually able to take off, or small tree-dwelling dinosaurs used their feathery coats to glide between trees and, eventually, flapped their way into a flying lifestyle. There are variations on both themes, but feathers and the characteristic avian flight stroke are at the core of any such scenario. In the case of the new paper, Yale University paleontologist Nicholas Longrich and colleagues draw from the plumage of early bird Archaeopteryx and the troodontid Anchiornis to examine how feathers changed as dinosaurs started to fly.
In modern flying birds, Longrich and coauthors point out, the wing arrangement typically consists of “long, asymmetrical flight feathers overlain by short covert feathers.” This pattern creates a stable airfoil but also lets the flight feathers separate a little during the upstroke of a wing beat, therefore reducing drag. When the paleontologists examined the fossilized wings of Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis, they found different feather arrangements that would have constrained the flight abilities of the Jurassic dinosaurs.
Both prehistoric creatures had long covert feathers layered on top of the flight feathers. Anchiornis, in particular, appeared to have an archaic wing form characterized by layers of short, symmetrical flight feathers and similarly shaped coverts. Archaeopteryx showed more specialization between the flight feathers and the coverts but still did not have a wing just like that of a modern bird. As a result, Longrich and collaborators hypothesize, both arrangements would have stabilized the wing at the cost of increased drag at low speeds, making it especially difficult for Anchiornis and Archaeopteryx to take off. As an alternative, the researchers suggest that these dinosaurs might have been parachuters who jumped into the air from trees, which might hint that “powered flight was preceded by arboreal parachuting and gliding.”
The trick is determining whether Anchiornis and Archaeopteryx actually represent the form of bird ancestors, or whether the dinosaurs, like Microraptor, were independent experiments in flight evolution. At the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Raleigh, North Carolina last month, flight expert Michael Habib quipped that all that was needed to make dromaeosaurs aerially competent was the addition of feathers. If Habib is right, and I think he is, then there could have been multiple evolutionary experiments in flying, gliding, wing-assisted-incline-running and other such activities. There’s no reason to think that flight evolved only once in a neat, clean march of ever-increasing aerodynamic perfection. Evolution is messy, and who knows how many ultimately failed variations there were among flight-capable dinosaurs?
The three-step Anchiornis-Archaeopteryx-modern bird scenario of wing evolution fits our expectations of what a stepwise evolutionary pattern would look like, but, as the authors of the new paper point out, shifting evolutionary trees currently confound our ability to know what represents the ancestral bird condition and what characterized a more distant branch of the feathered dinosaur family tree. We need more feathery fossils to further investigate and test this hypothesis, as well as additional biomechanical and paleoecological information to determine whether such dinosaurs really took off from trees. We must take great care in distinguishing between what an organism could do and what it actually did, and with so much up in the air, the debate on the origin of flight will undoubtedly continue for decades to come.
At present, hypotheses for the origin of avian flight typically fall into one of two categories. Either bird ancestors accrued the adaptations necessary for flight on the ground and, through evolutionary happenstance, were eventually able to take off, or small tree-dwelling dinosaurs used their feathery coats to glide between trees and, eventually, flapped their way into a flying lifestyle. There are variations on both themes, but feathers and the characteristic avian flight stroke are at the core of any such scenario. In the case of the new paper, Yale University paleontologist Nicholas Longrich and colleagues draw from the plumage of early bird Archaeopteryx and the troodontid Anchiornis to examine how feathers changed as dinosaurs started to fly.
In modern flying birds, Longrich and coauthors point out, the wing arrangement typically consists of “long, asymmetrical flight feathers overlain by short covert feathers.” This pattern creates a stable airfoil but also lets the flight feathers separate a little during the upstroke of a wing beat, therefore reducing drag. When the paleontologists examined the fossilized wings of Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis, they found different feather arrangements that would have constrained the flight abilities of the Jurassic dinosaurs.
Both prehistoric creatures had long covert feathers layered on top of the flight feathers. Anchiornis, in particular, appeared to have an archaic wing form characterized by layers of short, symmetrical flight feathers and similarly shaped coverts. Archaeopteryx showed more specialization between the flight feathers and the coverts but still did not have a wing just like that of a modern bird. As a result, Longrich and collaborators hypothesize, both arrangements would have stabilized the wing at the cost of increased drag at low speeds, making it especially difficult for Anchiornis and Archaeopteryx to take off. As an alternative, the researchers suggest that these dinosaurs might have been parachuters who jumped into the air from trees, which might hint that “powered flight was preceded by arboreal parachuting and gliding.”
The trick is determining whether Anchiornis and Archaeopteryx actually represent the form of bird ancestors, or whether the dinosaurs, like Microraptor, were independent experiments in flight evolution. At the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Raleigh, North Carolina last month, flight expert Michael Habib quipped that all that was needed to make dromaeosaurs aerially competent was the addition of feathers. If Habib is right, and I think he is, then there could have been multiple evolutionary experiments in flying, gliding, wing-assisted-incline-running and other such activities. There’s no reason to think that flight evolved only once in a neat, clean march of ever-increasing aerodynamic perfection. Evolution is messy, and who knows how many ultimately failed variations there were among flight-capable dinosaurs?
The three-step Anchiornis-Archaeopteryx-modern bird scenario of wing evolution fits our expectations of what a stepwise evolutionary pattern would look like, but, as the authors of the new paper point out, shifting evolutionary trees currently confound our ability to know what represents the ancestral bird condition and what characterized a more distant branch of the feathered dinosaur family tree. We need more feathery fossils to further investigate and test this hypothesis, as well as additional biomechanical and paleoecological information to determine whether such dinosaurs really took off from trees. We must take great care in distinguishing between what an organism could do and what it actually did, and with so much up in the air, the debate on the origin of flight will undoubtedly continue for decades to come.
Flying Wind Turbines Reach for High-Altitude Power: KitGen Airfoil
A Game of Tetherball
Photograph courtesy KiteGen
The KiteGen airfoil prototype dangles above its housing, with its high-tension wires reeled in. The start-up company is based in Chieri, Italy, near Torino.
KiteGen builds on some earlier prototypes and theoretical ideas. In the 1980s, Bryan Roberts, an engineering professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, tested a small prototype of a helicopter-like airborne turbine that he hoped would eventually fly to 15,000 feet (4,600 meters), where it would float on the strong winds and send energy down a very long tether. Roberts' idea lives on in his Oroville, California-based spin-off company Sky WindPower, which claims to be working on a Flying Generator.
Since the 1970s, airborne wind designers have toyed with a concept called the Laddermill, which is made up of a loop or loops of kites deployed at high altitude. By varying the "attack angles" of the kites, operators can theoretically get them to dive or soar, or fly in endless circles, all to transmit energy to the ground.
Dutch astronaut and physicist Wubbo Ockels published a 4-kW version of a Laddermill in 2007. In this proposal, a loop of kites would be lofted at a height of 0.62 mile (one kilometer). As the kites climbed, they would unspool a tether around a drum, which would drive a generator. When the line ran out, they would be angled to dive, and the slack line would be recovered-and then the kites would be sent back up for another cycle. According to the published proceeding in European Power and Energy Systems, Ockels' team successfully tested a 2-kW (a typical U.S. household routinely draws about 2 kW, not counting air-conditioning).
In a somewhat similar concept, the Italian start-up Twind Technology is working on a device made of two tethered balloons, each with an inflatable sail. The sails are alternately filled and stowed, to make the pair swing back and forth. The resultant motion of their tether can be used to saw wood or drive an engine, according to the company.
Read more
The KiteGen airfoil prototype dangles above its housing, with its high-tension wires reeled in. The start-up company is based in Chieri, Italy, near Torino.
KiteGen builds on some earlier prototypes and theoretical ideas. In the 1980s, Bryan Roberts, an engineering professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, tested a small prototype of a helicopter-like airborne turbine that he hoped would eventually fly to 15,000 feet (4,600 meters), where it would float on the strong winds and send energy down a very long tether. Roberts' idea lives on in his Oroville, California-based spin-off company Sky WindPower, which claims to be working on a Flying Generator.
Since the 1970s, airborne wind designers have toyed with a concept called the Laddermill, which is made up of a loop or loops of kites deployed at high altitude. By varying the "attack angles" of the kites, operators can theoretically get them to dive or soar, or fly in endless circles, all to transmit energy to the ground.
Dutch astronaut and physicist Wubbo Ockels published a 4-kW version of a Laddermill in 2007. In this proposal, a loop of kites would be lofted at a height of 0.62 mile (one kilometer). As the kites climbed, they would unspool a tether around a drum, which would drive a generator. When the line ran out, they would be angled to dive, and the slack line would be recovered-and then the kites would be sent back up for another cycle. According to the published proceeding in European Power and Energy Systems, Ockels' team successfully tested a 2-kW (a typical U.S. household routinely draws about 2 kW, not counting air-conditioning).
In a somewhat similar concept, the Italian start-up Twind Technology is working on a device made of two tethered balloons, each with an inflatable sail. The sails are alternately filled and stowed, to make the pair swing back and forth. The resultant motion of their tether can be used to saw wood or drive an engine, according to the company.
Read more
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