15 June 2015, Climate News Network, Long-lived CO2 warms world for many millennia. The heat given off by burning fossil fuels warms the Earth far less than the carbon dioxide emitted, which research shows traps the heat in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Gun the engine, and the ignition of fossil fuel produces not just working energy but heat that dissipates quickly into the atmosphere. But it also produces carbon dioxide that dissipates into the atmosphere. And in less than two months, according to new research, that pulse of carbon dioxide will have engendered more heat for the planet than the original touch of the accelerator. Xiaochun Zhang and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford, California, in the United States report in Geophysical Research Letters that the carbon dioxide warming exceeds the heat released by a single act of oil combustion in just 45 days. Light the gas in the cooking stove and the heating cost to the planet is exceeded in 59 days. Burn a lump of coal, and the atmosphere feels the greater heat in just 34 days. And in all three cases, the pulses of carbon dioxide will go on heating the planet – and on, and on. “Ultimately, the warming induced by carbon dioxide over the many thousands of years it remains in the atmosphere would exceed warming from combustion by a factor of 100,000 or more,” said Professor Caldeira. Read More here
Tag Archives: Emissions
12 June 2015, Science Daily, Fighting climate change, with cement: The cement industry is one of the largest sources worldwide of carbon emissions, accounting for around five per cent of global emissions. New technologies being developed by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology may help substantially lower these emissions.Membrane-based technology developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) is one of four technologies that may be used in a full-scale CO2 capture project — in a cement factory. Gassnova, Norway’s state-funded effort to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies for commercial use, has identified Norcem’s cement plant in Brevik and Yara’s ammonia plant in Porsgrunn as the most promising candidates for a full-scale CCS demonstration project in Norway. The decision was submitted to Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (OED) as part of a pre-feasibility study on 4 May. Read More here
11 June 2015, Energy Post, Canada will find US shale oil revolution hard act to follow:The new edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, just released, reports that the US recorded the largest increase in oil production in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia, thanks to its shale revolution. Can Canada follow the US example now that huge new shale oil deposits have been identified in the country’s remote Northwest Territories? Andrew Topf of Oilprice.com reports that the oil may well be there, but the external conditions are very different from those in the famous Bakken Formation in the US. There are many hurdles to overcome before the Northwest Territories become another Bakken. Read More here