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June 13 (Reuters) – ConocoPhillps (COP.N) reported flaring at its 120,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in the San Francisco Bay-area town of Rodeo, California, on Saturday, according to a notice filed with California pollution regulators.
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The filing did not say which unit was involved in the flaring, but the refinery shut a unit involved in gasoline production on June 8. The flaring ended on Saturday, according to the notice. (Reporting by Erwin Seba)
May 30 (Reuters) – Valero Energy Corp (VLO.N) reported on Sunday a leak in a pipe on a gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracking unit at its 310,000 barrel per day (bpd) Port Arthur, Texas, refinery, according to a notice filed with Texas pollution negotiators.
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The refinery may exceed pollution limits for the plant through May 31, according to the notice. (Reporting by Erwin Seba; editing by Gunna Dickson)
May 30 (Reuters) – BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N) warned of unplanned and planned flaring at its 265,000 barrel per day (bpd) Los Angeles-area refinery in Carson, California, as it works to restart a gasoline unit after it was shut for unscheduled repairs last week, according to notices filed with California pollution regulators on Saturday.
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One notice warned of unplanned flaring due to a breakdown on Saturday and Sunday. Another notice warned of planned flaring due to a breakdown from Sunday through Thursday. A third notice warned of planned flaring at the refinery through June 10.
BP is attempting to repair the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracking unit at the Carson refinery and return the FCCU and ancillary units to planned operations, sources familiar with refinery operations have said.
The company has declined to discuss operations at the refinery. (Reporting by Erwin Seba; editing by Gunna Dickson)
New York, May 8 (IANS) A suspicious package that forced evacuation of the Times Square Friday, has been found ‘not dangerous’ and the area has been reopened for traffic.
‘The suspicious package is not dangerous’, a New York City police spokesman was quoted as saying Friday by Xinhua.
Police said the package that forced evacuation of the Times Square was examined by the bomb squad, which found it to be just a lunch cooler with beverages inside.
This was the second time in less than a week the usually-crowded New York City’s entertainment centre was evacuated because of a suspicious package. The previous evacuation turned out to be for a failed car bomb last Saturday.
The cooler was spotted by New Yorkers at about 1 p.m. (local time) Friday outside the Marriott Hotel at West 45th Street on Broadway. The bomb squad was called to the scene, which examined the cooler and found it was safe, the spokesman said.
Last Saturday, a SUV loaded with gasoline, fireworks and propane tanks failed to explode in the same area. Some of the fireworks were, however, set off, causing smoke, officials said.
A 30-year-old American citizen of Pakistan origin, Faisal Shahzad, was arrested two days later on suspicion of being involved in the attempt, they said.
Beijing, Apr 30 (ANI): A Chinese man immolated himself after attacking five kindergarten class children and a teacher at a school in China”s Shandong province on Friday.
Wielding the iron hammer, the man reportedly injured five children and struck the foot of one teacher, who tried to block him.
The man soaked himself in gasoline and grabbed two children in his arms before setting himself on fire at Shangzhuang Primary School in Weifang City, Shandong Province, said a spokesman for the city government.
“All the five injured children had been taken to hospital, where doctors said their conditions were all stable and not life-threatening,” he added.
“The attacker, Wang Yonglai, a farmer from Shangzhuang Village, of Jiulong Community in the city”s Fangzi District, broke down a side gate of the school with his motorcycle at 7:40 a.m., said the police,” reports The Xinhua.
The police are further investigating the attack. (ANI)
With the countdown to the introduction of the Chevy Volt now at seven months, General Motors held a one-hour technical update Monday on the vehicle’s progress. The engineering team focused on actual test numbers, and steered away from broad marketing messages-as if to say that it’s time to get real about what the first Volt customers might experience when they get behind the wheel.
According to chief engineer Andrew Farah, the pre-production Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is achieving the much-publicized goal of 40 miles of electric-only driving-although the number of pure EV miles could be 20 percent higher or lower depending on driving conditions. After the batteries are depleted, and the gas engine is used to extend the vehicle’s range, the Volt travels at approximately 50 miles to the gallon, according to GM testing.
The engineering team has so far logged about a half-million miles of test-driving. Farah said the vehicle is on time and is performing well-adding that engineers continue to make modest tweaks on aerodynamic and “customer convenience items for 2012.” The Volt is scheduled to start regular production in the fourth quarter.
Total MPG Still In Question
The Volt team avoided its grandiose claim of 230 mpg from last summer. At the time, many observers warned that exaggerated and irrelevant miles per gallon numbers would come back to bite General Motors.
“The 230 mpg number talked about a few months ago was based on some preliminary discussion with the EPA,” said Farah. Last August, then-GM President and CEO Fritz Henderson announced the 230 mpg number, as part of a short-lived marketing campaign that featured a “230-mpg logo” and street-level buzz generation. At the time, Henderson said, “Are we overpromising? No. That’s what the customer will see in the city.”
The EPA has been exploring how to rate the efficiency of vehicles that use little or no gasoline, but has not issued its rules.
And The Price…
The big unanswered question, of course, is the price tag for the Chevy Volt. Nissan’s recent announcement that the pure electric Nissan Leaf will be sold for $32,800 (not including tax credits) will put pressure on GM to keep the Volt’s price below $40,000.
Pricing is tricky for these first-generation electric-drive vehicles, because carmakers are expected to lose money with each sale-but anticipate turning a profit in future generations with economies of scale. GM forecasts as much as a 50 percent in cost reductions on the third-generation battery pack, the vehicle’s most expensive component. Micky Bly, GM’s executive director of global electrical systems, said the team continues to study what other future vehicles might use a Volt-like propulsion system, but no details were provided.
GM gave indications that the company has a long-term commitment to plug-in series hybrid technology-what it calls “extended-range electric vehicles”-when it separately announced Monday that it plans to invest an additional $8 million to double the size of its automotive battery lab in Warren, Mich.
Reprinted with permission from Hybrid Cars
DUBAI, April 14 (Reuters) – State-run Chinaoil has sold two gasoline cargoes for April delivery to Iran, industry sources said on Wednesday, stepping into a void left by fuel suppliers halting shipments under threat of U.S. sanctions.
The cargoes were Chinaoil’s first direct sales to Iran since at least January 2009, according to Reuters Data. Chinese firms have previousluy sold through intermediaries, traders said. [ID:nPEK505199]
“Prior to this there was some third party trades going on, but this was a direct sell,” a trader said. (Reporting by Luke Pachymuthu; Editing by James Jukwey)
Electric cars are riding high, as incentives and new models make them a realistic option, but the fresh attention may highlight flaws compared with gasoline and alternatives such as biofuels.
The attention rankles with some in the biofuel industry, whose own hype was abruptly halted by a glut of production in 2007, subsequent bankruptcies and a fall from grace after a link was drawn — which they dispute — between biofuels and spiralling food prices and rising hunger.
Gasoline may beat off both alternatives for decades as the least-worst option, with wider adoption of more efficient conventional cars helping to curb carbon emissions and oil dependence.
The uncertainty is striking for a $5-6 trillion global auto and fuel supply market, where there is agreement only that the number of cars will keep rising, perhaps doubling to 2 billion by 2050.
The momentum is with electricity, following an oil price spike in 2008, lavish government incentives and a crippling downturn across the wider car industry. Last week the United States finalised fuel efficiency standards, following similar rules in Europe.
Green cars grabbed centre stage at auto shows this year in New York, Geneva and Detroit, including all-battery cars, hybrid varieties that switch between electric and gasoline, and small, more fuel-efficient conventional cars.
EXPENSIVE
But battery electric vehicles (EVs) are expensive.
Mitsubishi Motors and Nissan Motor Co last week announced prices for their i-MiEV and Leaf battery-only electric cars, in production already or about to debut, at 3.98 million yen ($42,520) and 3.76 million yen respectively before state subsidies, several times the cost of equivalent cars.
Reality bites with driving ranges of about 100 miles (160.9 km), far less than for a petrol car which U.S. customers expect to exceed 300 miles.
And electric cars have to contend with the multi-billion-dollar cost of a new charging infrastructure, although they benefit from running costs at about a quarter of gasoline at today’s prices, according to electric car advocates.
“The electric vehicle sector certainly has momentum, but it’s questionable whether it has the legs for the longer term, at least at the moment, and whether it has enough scale,” said Peter Wells at Cardiff University’s Centre for Automotive Industry Research, who expected big cost reductions.
Success depends on drivers accepting limitations on range and on re-charging time, which takes several hours, said Pierre Gaudillat, research and development manager at the UK-funded Carbon Trust.
“I don’t see any major breakthrough on the horizon,” he said. Customers may have to compromise on what they expect from a car, perhaps tailored for commuting, and from ownership, for example buying the car but renting the expensive battery.
Hybrid gasoline-electric cars overcome the range problem but are still pricey because of their complexity and battery costs.
Sales of hybrid-electric vehicles are expected to reach about 1.3 percent of an estimated 67 million light vehicle sales this year, according to the information company J.D. Power and Associates.
Battery-powered, all electric vehicles (EV) will only amount to about 20,000 units, but by 2015 could reach a 0.3 percent market share.
The International Energy Agency says EV and hybrids must reach at least 7 percent of global car sales by 2020 to hit targets to avoid more dangerous climate change.
Global biofuel production, meanwhile, will grow 16 percent in 2010, according to the Global Renewable Fuels Alliance.
Gasoline may continue to dominate both, especially if oil price rises are muted by efficiency drives. Automakers are already making smaller engines more powerful and transmissions more efficient, while the carbon emissions savings of both electric and biofuels are disputed.
“I think oil-based transport fuels have such a competitive advantage and dominance that you need a compelling argument to move to something different, and the case has not been made for what that is,” said Chris Mottershead, vice principal of research and innovation at King’s College London, and former head of climate change at oil major BP.
POSITIVE
Technologies to replace gasoline enthuse investors, even those doubtful of any climate threat, given the vulnerability of the United States and others to oil prices. The United States imports over half the petroleum it consumes.
HSBC is one backer of electric, investing $125 million in January in Better Place, a California-based company that wants to build charging networks and lease batteries to customers.
HSBC climate change analyst Nick Robins stressed a wider benefit, or “positive spill-over”, from electric cars which he contrasted with the negative wider impact of biofuels. Car batteries could help balance electric grids that are increasingly dependent on intermittent wind, by re-charging at night, Robins said.
Biofuels are made from sugar, corn and oil seeds now, and perhaps in the future from grass, crop waste and wood. Rising biofuel demand has stoked prices of feedstocks such as corn, but may only have played a small part in the 2008 food price spike, analysts say.
The oil major Royal Dutch Shell is a big backer of ethanol, striking a deal in February with Brazil’s Cosan to create a $21 billion a year ethanol joint venture.
Ethanol made from Brazil’s sugar cane is economic at an oil price of $40-50 a barrel, compared with $80 oil prices now. That has created an autos market in Brazil where most new cars are flex-fuel, handling any blend of gasoline and ethanol, at no extra cost.
(Editing by Anthony Barker)
(For more business news on Reuters Money visit http://www.reutersmoney.in)
TOKYO, March 29 (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T) said they would hold a joint news conference in Tokyo about environmental technologies at 5:40 p.m. (0840 GMT) on Monday.
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Toyota Executive Vice President Takeshi Uchiyamada and Mazda Executive Vice President Masaharu Yamaki will brief media, they said in a statement.
Sources have said Japan’s No.1 and No.5 carmakers were discussing the supply of Toyota’s hybrid technology to Mazda, which wants to launch a gasoline-electric vehicle by 2015. (Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim)
London, Sep 12 (ANI): The handshake by world’s most dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden has been described as limp, and like shaking a wet fish by a producer of CNN who met the terror mastermind.
CNN producer Peter Bergen, who wrote The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al-Qaeda’s Leader, met the most dreaded terrorist in March 1997 when he went to film his first television interview.
Bergen narrates about the extra security around bin Laden and how they were taken to his hideout at night changing vehicles blindfolded.
The interview took place near the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan where Bergen and his crew were electronically swept for tracking devices, and had to pass through three groups of guards armed with sub-machineguns.
“Bin Laden made no effort at small talk, wanting to get the interview done as soon as possible. Peter Jouvenal, our British cameraman, remembers that bin Laden’s handshake was limp, like shaking a wet fish,” The Times quoted him, as saying.
“I don’t recall shaking his hand but I do remember that he took frequent sips from a cup of tea, giving him an air that was more feline than fierce, and his blistering diatribe against the US for its policies in the Middle East was delivered in a barely audible whisper. After an hour he was gone, as suddenly as he had arrived,” he adds.
He also narrates Abdel Bari Atwan, a London-based Palestinian journalist who interviewed him in Afghanistan in 1996, as saying that Bin Laden, it seems, had prepared for life as a fugitive for years, adopting a monk-like detachment from material comforts.
Zaynab Khadr, whose family lived with the al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan during the late 1990s, was quoted by the author as saying that he did not even allow his children to drink cold water because he wanted them to be prepared for the day when there’s no cold water.
He quotes Bin Laden as once instructing his followers: “You should learn to sacrifice everything from modern life like electricity, air-conditioning, refrigerators, gasoline. If you are living the luxury life, it’s very hard to go to the mountains to fight.”
In a tape posted to Islamist websites in February 2006, he says bin Laden confirmed his willingness to be martyred: “I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don’t want to die humiliated or deceived.” (ANI)
Washington, August 20 (ANI): Engineers at Ohio State University, US, have found a way to double the production of the biofuel butanol, which might someday replace gasoline in automobiles.
The process improves on the conventional method for brewing butanol in a bacterial fermentation tank.
Normally, bacteria could only produce a certain amount of butanol – perhaps 15 grams of the chemical for every liter of water in the tank – before the tank would become too toxic for the bacteria to survive, explained Shang-Tian Yang, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State.
Yang and his colleagues developed a mutant strain of the bacterium Clostridium beijerinckii in a bioreactor containing bundles of polyester fibers.
In that environment, the mutant bacteria produced up to 30 grams of butanol per liter.
Right now, butanol is mainly used as a solvent, or in industrial processes that make other chemicals. But experts believe that this form of alcohol holds potential as a biofuel.
Once developed as a fuel, butanol could potentially be used in conventional automobiles in place of gasoline, while producing more energy than another alternative fuel, ethanol.
Yang said that this use of his patented fibrous-bed bioreactor would ultimately save money.
“Today, the recovery and purification of butanol account for about 40 percent of the total production cost,” explained Yang.
“Because we are able to create butanol at higher concentrations, we believe we can lower those recovery and purification costs and make biofuel production more economical,” he said.
The engineers are applying for a patent on the mutant bacterium and the butanol production methodology, and will work with industry to develop the technology. (ANI)
Washington, July 15 (ANI): A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find – grass, wood, old furniture, or even dead bodies.
Robotic Technology Inc.’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) “can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable,” reads the company’s Web site.
Animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they’d be plentiful in a war zone.
EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone Power Technology of Pompano Beach, Florida, which uses an “external combustion chamber” burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.
The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced.
Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things – a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship.
Robotic Technology is presenting EATR as an essentially benign artificial creature that fills its belly through “foraging,” despite the obvious military purpose. (ANI)
Rome (Italy), July 9 (ANI): Piaggio, the makers of classic scooter the Vespa, unveiled the world’s first hybrid scooter-cum plug-in bike this week. It is the first to be powered by both petrol and electric motors.
The Sun was one of the first to get a peek at the new bike which is expected to be on sale in the UK by September.
The MP3 hybrid bike will go into mass production at the end of the summer and will allow riders to push a button to switch between a hybrid mode which uses petrol and electric power using purely electric drive.
Experts expect other major manufacturers, including Yamaha, Honda and Segway, to come out with both plug-in and petrol bikes.
The electric drive will be speed limited to 20 kilometres per hour. It is powered by a 124cc gasoline motor with the addition of a 2.6kW electric motor – and even includes a reverse gear for easier parking.
Using the electric motor alone it glides along virtually silently, but is limited to a top speed of just 30 km/h.
It’s a comfortable ride, but in traffic it feels in need of the extra acceleration of the petrol engine – which can kick in at the click of a switch.
The battery takes five hours to recharge, but can be plugged into an ordinary 220 volt household plug with a small connector.
The hybrid bike’s environmental credentials are promising – Piaggio claim it will manage 60km a litre, compared with an average of 26km a litre for the average mid size petrol scooter and its CO2 emissions are 40 grams per kilometre compared with 90grams per km for a similar petrol brand.
The big drawback is the price – expected to be between 8,000 and 9,000 pounds. (ANI)
Washington, June 20 (ANI): Scientists have said that they are forging ahead in developing replacements for petrochemical fuels that will be cost-competitive and renewable while having a minimal impact on the environment.
A consensus is emerging that no one technology will reign supreme and that a range of current and novel methodologies will contribute to meeting biofuel needs, according to a report in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN).
“It’s been estimated that fossil fuels constitute more than eighty percent of the world’s main energy supply,” said John Sterling, Editor in Chief of GEN.
“Both economics and the concern over global warming require that technologies be used to significantly lower this number,” he added.
Edenspace Systems is working on Energy Corn, a feedstock designed to cut the cost of producing cellulosic biofuels from corn stover.
The company’s technology platform, based on identifying promising cellulose genes, transforming crop plants with candidate genes, and evaluating the effects on growth, yield, and cellulose hydrolysis, would be applicable to a variety of energy crops including switchgrass, sorghum, and sugar cane.
Officials at Coskata say the company relies on a hybrid approach based on its Flex Ethanol technology, which combines gasification and fermentation in a thermo-biological pathway to produce fuel-grade ethanol that it contends can be cost-competitive with gasoline.
The process reportedly is able to yield more than 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of dry biomass.
Also discussed in the GEN article is biofuel research taking place at ICM, Qteros, Synthetic Genomics, Solazyme, and the United States Department of Agriculture. (ANI)
Washington, May 29 (ANI): A new study has shown that shown that a biofuel eliminating even 10-percent of current gasoline pollutant emissions would have a beneficial impact on human health.
While the focus of a shift from gasoline to biofuels has been on global warming, such a shift could also impact human health.
A grant from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) has produced a novel and comprehensive “Life Cycle Impact Assessment” (LCIA) to measure the benefits on human health that might result from a switch to biofuels.
Although there are a number of uncertainties that must be addressed for a more accurate picture, these early results show that a biofuel eliminating even 10-percent of current gasoline pollutant emissions would have a substantial impact on human health, especially in urban areas.
Assessments of the life cycle impacts of emissions from gasoline-run motors in the US on a county-by-county basis show that the heaviest damage (darkest coloring) is concentrated in urban areas, especially Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
Nonetheless, Thomas McKone, an expert on health risk assessments and EBI researcher Agnes Lobscheid, were able to prepare an LCIA for reduced gasoline use based on the damage to human health that emissions from gasoline burning can cause.
For a baseline, they used a 10-percent reduction in gasoline use.
In assessing the impact of these emissions on human health, they looked at “disability adjusted life years” or “DALYs,” which is a combination of two common damage factors in LCIAs – years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLLs) and the equivalent years of life lost due to disability (YLDs).
“In looking at emission impacts on health, we have the capacity to carry out county-level resolution measurements for both direct and indirect emissions,” said McKone.
Measured emissions at county-level resolution included direct particulate matter and indirect fine particles (2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller) produced from emissions of sulfate and nitrite gases, volatile organic compounds and ammonia, plus ozone, toxic air pollutants, emissions to surface and ground water, and emissions to soil.
“We found that for the vehicle operation phase of our LCIA, the annual health damages avoided in the US with 10-percent less gasoline-run motor vehicle emissions ranges from about 5,000 to 20,000 DALY, with most of the damage resulting from primary fine particle emissions,” said McKone.
“While county-specific damages range over nine orders of magnitude across all US counties most of the damage, as you would expect, is concentrated in urban populations with the highest impact in the Los Angeles, New York and Chicago regions,” he added. (ANI)
Washington, May 18 (ANI): A team of chemists has designed a new sponge-like material that can remove mercury from polluted water, easily separate hydrogen from other gases and is a more effective catalyst than the one currently used to pull sulfur out of crude oil.
Hydrodesulfurization is a widely used catalytic chemical process that removes sulfur from natural gas and refined petroleum products, such as gasoline and diesel and jet fuels.
Without the process, which is highly optimized, people would be burning sulfur, which contributes to acid rain.
Scientists have tried to improve hydrodesulfurization, or HDS, but have made no progress. Many consider it an optimized process.
Now, the Northwestern researchers, in collaboration with colleagues at Western Washington University, report that their material is twice as active as the conventional catalyst used in HDS, while at the same time being made of the same parts.
The material, cobalt-molybdenum-sulfur, which is black, brittle and freeze-dried, is a new class of chalcogels, a family of material discovered only a few years ago at Northwestern.
Chalcogels are random networks of metal-sulfur atoms with very high surface areas.
The new chalcogel is made from common elements, is stable when exposed to air or water and can be used as a powder.
This is the first report of chalcogels being used for catalysis and gas separation.
Mercouri G. Kanatzidis, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison, Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and doctoral student Santanu Bag made this catalyst using a method different from that of the conventional catalyst.
The Northwestern material is a gel made of cobalt, nickel, molybdenum and sulfur that then is freeze-dried, producing a sponge-like material with a very high surface area.
It is this high surface area and the material’s stability under catalytic conditions that make the cobalt-molybdenum-sulfur chalcogel so active.
The researchers also demonstrated that the new chalcogel soaks up toxic heavy metals from polluted water like no other material.
The chalcogel removed nearly 99 percent of the mercury from contaminated water containing several parts per million.
Mercury likes to bind to sulfur, and the chalcogel is full of sulfur atoms.
In addition to being a better HDS catalyst and a mercury sponge, the chalcogel also is very effective at gas separation.
The researchers showed that the material easily removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from hydrogen, an application that could be useful in the hydrogen economy. (ANI)
London, May 13 (ANI): The United States helped Spitfire and Hurricane pilots win the Battle of Britain with super-fuel which made them fly faster, the Americans have claimed.
A US science writer has now claimed that Britain’s two most famous aircraft were not as significant in defeating the Luftwaffe as we might like to believe.
The Telegraph quotes Tim Palucka as asserting that the British fighters were able to outmanoeuvre their German opponents because they were running on a special high-octane fuel created in the US.
He claims that the 100-octane fuel increased the Spitfire’s speed by 25 mph at sea level and by 34 mph at 10,000 feet.
This proved vital during dogfights over the Channel and the skies above England in 1940, Palucka writes in the journal Invention And Technology.
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is inviting experts to challenge the claims.
RSC spokesman Brian Emsley said: “If it’s refutable we want it to be refuted. All we’ve got to go on is the one report. The Spitfire is a wonderful bit of British design, it’s an icon, so we approach this with trepidation, but the possibility should be aired. It could mean that science and chemistry played its part.”
Palucka claims that the fuel was made using a process invented by a Frenchman and supplied to the RAF by the US.
He said that it helped the aeroplanes gain superior altitude, manoeuvrability and rate of climb. The fuel replaced the 87-octane gasoline, which was previously used in the planes.
The RSC said it was the first time it had heard the claim. If it remains intact the society will send the report to aviation and military historians to mark the newly-discovered contribution of chemists to victory. (ANI)
London, April 20 (ANI): A new research has suggested that particles of lead from gasoline exhaust may have offset warming in the 20th century, causing global cooling.
It’s well known that particles in the atmosphere such as mineral dust, pollen, heavy metals and even bacteria can act as seeds for the nucleation of ice crystals.
These crystals form clouds that can affect the Earth’s energy balance by reflecting the sun’s rays back into space, for example.
According to a report in New Scientist, Dan Cziczo and colleagues of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, created artificial clouds in the laboratory to explore the ice nucleation efficiency of various particles.
Over a third of the ice nuclei generated contained lead, suggesting it is a highly-efficient nucleator.
They found similar proportions of lead in atmospheric mineral dust samples collected in Switzerland.
Cziczo argues that lead “supercharges” ice-nucleating dust particles in the atmosphere.
According to his calculations, global infrared emission would be 0.8 watts per square meter higher if all atmospheric ice crystals contained lead compared with none.
“Before leaded fuel was phased out from road vehicles last century, the atmosphere contained substantially more leaded particulates than today,” said Cziczo.
This may have helped offset greenhouse warming from about 1940 to 1980, when global temperatures rose little before rising steeply. (ANI)
British Columbia campaign officially starts
* Seen as test on economy and carbon tax
* Candidates must compete with NHL playoffs
By Allan Dowd
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 14 (Reuters) – Politicians on Canada’s Pacific Coast hit the campaign trail on Tuesday for the start of a provincial election that could decide the fate of North America’s first comprehensive carbon tax.
British Columbia is the first province to hold an election since Canada slid into recession, although polls indicate the governing Liberal Party is headed for another victory over the New Democratic Party when voters cast their ballots on May 12.
NDP leader Carole James called on voters to punish Premier Gordon Campbell’s Liberals for mishandling the economic downturn, which has pushed unemployment in the province’s largely resource-based economy to 7.4 percent.
“British Columbia has had the worst job losses in the country. We need a change,” James told a rally near Vancouver.
The Liberals, who have governed the province since 2001, say the New Democrats mismanaged British Columbia’s finances when the economy was doing well in the 1990s and cannot be trusted to handle it now when times are tough.
“British Columbians know this election is critical to their future and that the progress we have made could all be lost in a heartbeat if they make the wrong choice on May 12,” Campbell said in a written statement.
A survey released by research firm Mustel Group showed the right-of-center Liberals with 52 percent support among decided voters, compared with 35 percent for the left-leaning NDP and 12 percent for the Green Party.
The campaign has created an unusual dilemma for the province’s environmental activists. They have traditionally sided with the New Democrats but now object to the NDP’s plans to scrap the carbon tax launched by the Liberals last year.
The tax applies to nearly all fossil fuels, including gasoline and home heating fuel, starting at C$10 per tonne of carbon emissions in 2008 and increasing by C$5 a tonne annually for four years.
The tax became a lightning rod for criticism when it was launched in July, when energy prices were already at record highs and drivers began paying an additional 2.41 Canadian cents on a litre of gasoline (about 9.13 cents per U.S. gallon).
The NDP’s “Axe the Tax” campaign coincided with a rise in the polls that briefly had them neck and neck with the Liberals in November, garnering particular support in rural areas of the province.
The NDP plans to replace the carbon tax with other caps on emissions aimed at industrial sources, but environmental groups complain that will do little to reduce greenhouse gasses and could end up costing jobs.
British Columbia is already part of the Western Climate Initiative, a coalition of U.S. states and Canadian provinces that have agreed to adopt a cap and trade system for carbon emissions starting in 2012.
Candidates from both main parties will also have to compete for voters attention with a high-profile, non-political distraction: the Vancouver Canucks begin their National Hockey League playoffs this week in a quest for the Stanley Cup.
($1=$1.21 Canadian) (Reporting Allan Dowd, editing by Rob Wilson)
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Californians say “baby, baby, no more drilling”
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar confronted a host of sea creatures and polar bears on Thursday as costumed Californians told the new administration ‘no’ to offshore oil drilling.
Salazar did not hint at the contents of President Barack Obama’s energy policy, but said it would address climate change and include oil and gas.
“We’re not going to turn off the oil and gas requirements we have for this country overnight or even in a decade. We’re going to see oil and gas production,” he told a packed hearing on offshore drilling.
The crowd booed a lonely supporter of offshore drilling and waved dollar bills to signify that they thought increased production of oil and gas was a sell-out of environmental policy.
Californians, known for their cars as well as their love of the outdoors, on the whole have been less united.
Last summer, when gasoline prices surged above $4 a gallon and chants of “drill, baby, drill” became a rallying cry at the Republican National Convention, a majority of Californians supported offshore drilling for the first time.
The July poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found 51 percent of Californians favored expanding offshore drilling, up 10 points from a year earlier.
But the poll also found that 52 percent of Californians believe global warming is a serious threat to their state.
Last week the Board of Supervisors of California’s Santa Barbara County, the site of a 1969 oil spill that galvanized the modern environmental movement, voted to reverse a decision backing offshore energy development.
SHAPING NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY
When Salazar took office in January he was handed a five-year plan drafted in the final days of the Bush administration to open parts of the Atlantic, Gulf Coast, Pacific, and Alaska to outer continental shelf drilling between 2010 and 2015.
The outer continental shelf is 1.75 billion acres of federally administered sea floor, the equivalent of 80 percent of the United States landmass. As of 2006, the shelf was believed to have about 87 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
At current prices of about $50 a barrel, only about 50 percent of the remaining reserves are economically recoverable, according to a federal report.
“Our national policy has been hijacked by ‘drill, baby, drill,’” California Congresswoman Jackie Speier told the audience. “The new rallying cry is ‘baby, baby, no more drilling.’”
California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi told reporters funds should be spent on clean energy such as solar thermal, wind and geothermal. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger targets 33 percent of electricity from renewables by 2020.
“We’re on the very early stages of a new industrial revolution, a new industrial revolution not based on fossil fuels but, rather, based on renewable energy,” Garamendi said.
But the country will not be able to avoid oil, chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute John Felmy said in an interview with Reuters prior to the hearing.
“We need energy efficiency, we need alternatives, but we also need oil and gas,” he said, noting that oil provides power for 96 percent of all transportation.
“Hopefully we will see a fleet of electric cars come in place, but until they do, there’s no way,” he said.
No drilling policy is expected until after the comment period ends on September 21, but Salazar said an energy policy should be made public by the end of 2009.
(Additional reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco)