Worried About Air Pollution? Don't Hide Indoors

You need to get out more. Whether it's smog or tiny particles of pollution, Americans face the bulk of their health risks from bad air inside. Why? We spend most of our time indoors.

Now researchers have found chemicals from indoor air someplace we might not want it: our blood. The research is in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

A variety of the chemicals used to make everything from carpets to couches resist stains showed up in the serum of 31 Boston office workers. The researchers found the highest levels of these chemicals in the air inside new buildings and, subsequently, in the blood of those who worked there. The office workers even had traces in their blood of one of these compounds withdrawn from use roughly a decade ago.

It could be worse. Hundreds of thousands of people die each year from soot from the indoor fires they use to cook or heat their homes. And the health impacts of these chemicals in humans remain unclear—though in animals they affect the liver, the immune system and reproduction.

So crack the window from time to time. Open the door. Get some fresh air.

Educate the Public on Alternative Energy

One of the most effective ways through which young people can learn about alternatives might use kits, books, or even PicoTurbine projects. This company, called PicoTurbine, is the main promoter of alternative energies, a company that has created awareness worldwide of the numerous advantages of using large scale of these energies. The environment must be protected and alternative energy sources definitely take into account this aspect. Therefore, if mankind is to benefit in the future environment, active measures of protection must apply.

PicoTurbine devices operate on several concepts; for example, that actively incorporate knowledge about alternative energy sources and make sure that people are remembered from time to time, this approach. The company receives a lot of customer feedback, thus modifying their solutions to traditional energy sources in a way young seem to find the setting. Therefore young people come to get their hands directly on the real life situation and make a change. The company has received suggested carrying out experiments on the production of wind power, using the image cable known common need for heating elements.

 PicoTurbines has also pointed out that when people think about wind energy, usually conjure the image of energy cold and therefore are surprised to actually see the benefits of this technology. A suggestion for the projects was to give you the opportunity to young people to participate in group projects and therefore make their own discoveries and pose your own questions to the creation of his own, power plant, capable of producing energy in real time. Groups, then, will be able to see if the experiments were efficient and one of them was able to produce the greatest amount of electricity or the least amount of electricity. They could then modify the draft once more and versions revised from what you are working in.

PicoTurbine has even been implemented in the school curricula; teachers are now starting to instill in the senses for their students appreciation for environmental protection and awareness of alternative energy sources. Teach alternative means children solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass energies which can produce significant amounts of electricity under given conditions …cuando combining alternative energies which we are diminishing the dependence of the countries our traditional energy derived from fossil fuels. Foreign oil supplies are more expensive by the day, so it would be much less costly produce the importer in the country and if it is possible, then become importer of energy. Judging from the effects of long-term, alternative energy sources are certainly less expensive than fossil fuels.

The company has also promoted sales of wind farms, as well as solar panels; These products are entering the market in growth rates and are already becoming best-sellers. To give an example of how time has helped to reduce the total cost for certain things, story photo voltaic cells. Twenty years ago, they were assessed in thousand dollars for each cell; Now, each of these cells costs only $4.

Therefore, economists and specialists in alternative energies have trumped that it is possible to have the kilowatt sold for one dollar, in 2015. Therefore, there is to imagine the impact extraordinary that alternative energy sources would have around the world. Fossil fuels are beginning to use his popularity, mainly because they greatly hurt the environment and the air we're breathing. Thus, it has been reported recently many cases of asthma attacks and pneumonias and the risk of developing allergies is extremely high. Such long-term effects may even lead to cancer, therefore it is advisable to switch to the alternative because this would mean no pollution, more protection for the environment and less money spent on energy costs.

The Truth About Natural Gas From Shale

Natural gas from shale is a game-changer for the United States.

It offers us greater control over our energy destiny, more jobs and government revenues, energy affordability, and reduced environmental impacts.

Unfortunately, there are myths associated with this resource and its method of extraction, which is why I would like to provide a simple explanation of how the process actually works to help demystify it.

Natural gas from dense shale rock formations has become the fastest-growing source of natural gas in the United States and could become a significant new global energy source. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. has over 2500 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of recoverable natural gas resources – 33% of which is natural gas from shale.

In just one decade, natural gas from shale has grown to around 25% of U.S. gas production and it will nearly double by 2035. This is significant as it will continue to provide the United States with reliable, affordable energy and present economic benefits to regions of the country such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

Although the energy industry has long known about huge gas resources trapped in shale rock formations, it is over the past decade that energy companies have combined two established technologies—hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—to successfully unlock this resource.

Understandably, this natural gas boom has raised some questions and concerns about how this resource is developed, including questions about the process of hydraulic fracturing and the affects, if any, on the water table. While there is much debate and rhetoric surrounding this resource, often times a simple explanation of the process is left out of the discussion. In an effort to help raise awareness of how natural gas from shale is extracted, here is a brief explanation:

Once an area prospective for hydrocarbons has been determined, permission to drill is obtained from the landowner, a lease is signed, permits are secured, and environmental impact studies are conducted. Then seismic data is gathered to determine the best location to place the well in the shale that lies deep underground.

Once determined, a well site is constructed. From the well site, we are able to drill multiple wells from a single site to minimize land use. A drilling rig is then used to drill thousands of feet below the earth’s surface. In the Marcellus Basin, wells are typically around 8,000 feet deep – nearly 7,000 feet below the water table. The rig then drills horizontally, roughly 2,000 to 6,000 feet outward into the layer of shale rock. Many companies use several layers of steel casing and cement to form a continuous barrier between the well and the surrounding formations. In our Marcellus Basin wells located in Northeast United States, for example, Chevron uses up to 8 layers of steel casing and cement through the critical shallow section of the well that contains the water table to ensure the resource is extracted safely.

Because the gas is trapped in dense shale rock, we use the process of hydraulic fracturing to allow the gas to be extracted more easily. In hydraulic fracturing, a fluid comprised of more than 99 percent water and sand and less than 1 percent chemical additives is pumped down the well at a high pressure for a short period of time, usually a few hours. This creates a network of cracks in the shale rock that allows trapped natural gas to flow to the well. The sand helps keep the fractures open and gas flowing. This is not a new practice. It has been safely used since the 1940s in more than 1 million wells in the United States. After the shale rock has been fractured, some of the hydraulic fracturing fluid is returned to the surface through the well pipe, treated and either recycled or disposed of in regulator-approved underground water injection wells.

I support the disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing process. FracFocus.org is a joint website project of the Groundwater Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, which provides an inventory of compounds used by operators, including Chevron, in the hydraulic fracturing process in the U.S.

Once a well is completed, a pipeline is built to take the natural gas to market to be used for electricity generation, home heating and other energy needs. We then work with the landowner to remediate the drill site and restore the land with minimal impact to its original contours.

After the well site has been remediated, the remaining footprint of a producing natural gas well is typically less than one acre. It includes a well head, a gas processing unit and one or two water tanks. Natural gas wells that produce from shale rock are typically expected to have a long production life spanning many years.

As is the case in other areas of our business, our ability to operate depends on public confidence in our operations. This trust can only be earned through open, honest and timely dialogue with surrounding communities and operating at a high standard.

Natural gas from shale can provide the U.S. with reliable, affordable, cleaner and responsibly produced energy - but we must have a supportive policy framework to encourage this development. Doing so will help enhance the country’s energy security, strengthen local and state economies, and fuel job growth.

View the original article here

Thoughts on 10 Questions about Climate Change from Australia

Over recent weeks one of the major Australian newspapers (The Melbourne Age) has asked readers to submit questions on climate change and at the same time opened a poll so that all readers could vote on the questions they most wanted to see answered. The newspaper pledged to investigate and attempt to answer the top ten questions. The poll closed last weekend and the questions are now in. As promised, The Age has started to answer them. Without getting too lengthy and also drawing on many previous postings (so excuse the links), here are some thoughts from me on the ten questions (with abbreviated questions as headings – but click here to see the full questions:

1. Can Australia make a difference by taking action?

While it is true that Australian emissions are small on a global scale and that therefore even reducing them to zero wouldn’t be sufficient to affect levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, this isn’t a reason not to take action. Climate change is a collective issue, a tragedy of the commons, which requires collective action to solve. No one country, region or industrial sector can solve this unilaterally. Even if the big three, China, the USA and the major EU economies acted alone (with China reaching a plateau in the short term and then reducing by 50% by 2050 and the US and EU reducing by 80% by 2050), global emissions would plateau at best assuming that the rest of the world emissions grew by no more than 1.5% per annum over the next 40 years (in fact they have been growing at well over 2% p.a. over recent decades). So this issue needs a response from all nations, including Australia.

Will Australia inspire other nations? This isn’t the primary motivation of acting and in any case many nations around the world are beginning to move on this issue and take action. The responses still vary widely, but they are underway. For example, Canada is developing legislation to stop the further construction of coal fired power stations, unless carbon capture and storage is utilised. China is now very close to introducing a carbon price into some parts of its economy and California is starting up a cap-and-trade system. The list is long and growing, even though the sum total of global efforts fall short of the necessary level of ambition.

2. What about agricultural emissions?

There is no doubt that agricultural emissions are important. As such, they featured in some detail in a recent study released by WWF and Ecofys which looks at the feasibility of a near zero emissions world by 2050. Although the primary focus of the report is energy, there is much said about agriculture because of the growing interaction with the energy system. For example, see page 62 of the report for a series of recommendations that relate to food and agriculture.

3. Isn’t it true that the magnitude of future warming is not “settled science”, but in fact highly uncertain?

Climate change is all about uncertainty, but a great deal of work has been done in this field. The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change focuses considerable effort on communicating the risk and uncertainty (The Greenhouse Gamble) related to climate change. But importantly it also demonstrates that a policy led approach to managing emissions can shift the risk and offer benefits over the long term.

4. Shouldn’t we just go nuclear?

At least for the time being, there is no single solution to this issue. We will need a broad range of solutions. Even in France where nuclear has grown to dominate (~80%) the electricity sector over the last 40 years, emissions have only fallen by 14% (from 435 MT to 374 MT from 1971 to 2008 according to the IEA).

5. Are climate skeptics funded by industrial concerns so as to maintain the status quo?

The origins of climate skepticism and the driving force behind it is examined in great detail by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book “Merchants of Doubt”. This is an excellent read and turns up some surprising answers, linking those who question and challenge the issue of climate change with the same people and groups who challenged tobacco as a cause of cancer, acid rain and the destruction of forests, chlorofluorocarbons and the thinning of the ozone layer and so on.

6. Why is there so little investigative journalism into the science and its flaws.

This is because the science isn’t flawed. Yes, there remains uncertainty, but new research is refining and improving our knowledge of the Earth’s climate system and how it is expected to respond to increasing levels of CO2. I discussed the science in some detail in a recent post.

7. Renewables are viable now, so why do we need coal and uranium for baseload power?

A number of renewable technologies offer a great deal of potential and some are being widely deployed, such as onshore wind. But there are limits to the rate at which these new technologies can be fully developed and deployed. As such, we will need a broad range of energy technologies for a long time to come. My colleagues in the Shell scenarios team wrote about these limits in an article published in Nature late in 2009 and I discussed it in a posting at that time.

8. Is it possible to have a fruitful debate on the science given existing belief structures?

As mentioned above, I discussed the science at some length in a recent posting. But we do seem to live in a world today that is becoming detached from science, despite our increasing dependency and love of technology. I wrote a post on this last year. Perhaps belief structures are getting in the way, an issue which is also discussed by Naomi Oreskes in the book mentioned above.

9. How do the Liberal Party’s policies compare with other centre-right policies around the world?

I don’t think there is such a strong link between political leaning and climate policy, despite the rhetoric on this subject. Policy approaches vary widely around the world as do the governments that set them. For example, in the EU where there are 27 Member States with governments covering a broad range of the political spectrum, including many centre-right governments, there is a comprehensive climate change policy framework now in place which includes emissions trading, long term targets and tough energy efficiency goals. This policy framework goes beyond any of the party proposals under consideration in Australia today, but equally it has been in development for nearly ten years. It started out very modestly. In North America where there has been little progress on climate legislation at the federal level, many US States and Canadian Provinces, again covering a broad range of the political spectrum, have implemented far reaching emissions management policies. In the United States it was the Republican Party (centre-right) which introduced cap-and-trade (emissions trading) to the world when they decided to use that policy instrument to manage sulphur emissions from power stations in the 1980s.

10. Why should we believe the science when there is no observed relationship between climate and atmospheric CO2?

There is really no question of a relationship between climate and atmospheric CO2. This was shown over 100 years ago and explains very clearly and without challenge why the surface of the planet is temperate where a simple heat / radiation balance calculation shows that it should be frozen. The issue is therefore how much more change will occur as we double or triple the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

What you need to know about alternative energy suppliers?

The meaning of the alternative energy is growing in contact with the modern civilization and the trends. There is no confusion that alternative energy is an indispensable part of human civilization. Renewable energy sources, it is very cost effective and it also protects the humane society of the grip of the pollution and serious damage to society.

In reality there are many developed and developing countries that are bold steps take the alternative energy that are available on the prices of the low price. for this reason, a number of companies set to generate different types of renewable energy and power for the benefits of the society and countries.

Let us an overview how other companies have shown their potency in the alternative energy production in large quantities for the Betterment of the country. For example, is a well-known Amelot Holdings company sector which had already been adopted and a team of scientists and researchers for the enhancement of the various studies in the field of biodiesel and ethanol products.

This company wants to build a durable link to deal with a number of well corporations who also to carry out a wide-ranging investigation work in the arena of biofuels and other alternative energy such as ethanol based energy source.Compatible with these companies, in addition, the great Amelot Holdings community that will show their maximum capacity and expertise in the alternative source of energy and power.

On the other hand, the name of the Environmental Power for the review.This company is also very famous in speeding up the long term agreements and contracts with small-scale industries to generate the alternative energy in the near future. it is also equipped with two sister companies such as Microgy and thief Power.

Microgy has earned a lot of recognition in the field of research and development in the field of alternative energy.It turns out the potentially update the biogas that is available at the lower prices will be.It is also environmentally friendly without damage to the atmosphere.

You must select this biogas as may be required for the activation of different types of industries with a lot of comfort. flammable engines and heavy machinery can be performed by the subsidiary biogas and this sector is trying to make the biogas energy efficient, cost effective and user friendly.

Common buzzard is another subsidiary of environmental Power and in fact leads to green energy.The energy is generated from the waste of mined coal. environmental Power feel very proud of their gigantic outstanding performance track record.

In case you are the graphics performance of this company, you will feel joyful as this business has a large number of contributed to the biogas and other alternative energy sources to generate huge volume. This company has a number of alternative power plants for the production of renewable energy.

If you are very carefully, you will come in contact with some of the world known companies as an intrepid technology and resources Inc., Nathaniel energy and many more that the huge performance record created by doing research in the field of alternative energy sources. these companies have shown that expertise to recycle materials in order to obtain the renewable energy and energy, which will be expanded in the field of human society waste.