Science & Technology

Image from D G Brown

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes the case that 208-250 billion tons of carbon dioxide -- roughly equivalent to a century's worth of future emissions (122-147 years, to be exact) -- could be safely stored under the Juan de Fuca plate, reports The Guardian's Alok Jha.

The tectonic plate, which ari...

When Lighting Your Water on Fire Isn't a Magic Trick
Jessica Ernst lives in the village of Rosebud, Alberta, East of Calgary. EnCana, a big oil & gas company, is operating close to her house. The photo above speaks for itself. Read on for her story....

photos courtesy of The Jatropha System

India is one of the world’s leading cultivators of as a feedstock for biodiesel, with over one million hectares planted to date. That figure is set to rise slightly on the news that Hindustan Petroleum and the Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Agency (CREDA) are partnering to plant an additional 15,000 hectares.

photo by Erin Collins

Plans by the Kenyan government to approve expansion of sugarcane cultivation in the Tana River Delta by Mumias, the nation's largest sugar cane producer, have been dealt a blow by the courts.

As reported by Reuters, the Malindi High Court ruled last Friday that environmentalists and representatives of local livestock groups could apply for judicial review of the project. Until this judicial review is completed...

Tesla Electric Roadsters Finally Ship to Customers
As they say, if you never fail, you're probably not trying. It took a long time, and some even lost faith in the young company, but Tesla has now "broken the logjam", in the words of Ze'ev Drori, its president and CEO. Tesla electric Roadsters are now shipping. "Already 9 production Roadsters have arrived in California, another 3 arrive this weekend, and they will keep arriving at the rate of 4 per week" until December when production should ramp up to about 25 per week. There are currently 27 Roadsters in various stages of asse...

Image from hdptcar

Time for another round of good news, bad news. First, the good: According to a weighty new UN report (it's 6,300 pages long and includes submissions from 2,500 experts) uncovered by The Independent, the world stands poised to enter a new era of peace, prosperity and empowerment. Increased democratization, economic and technological advances and medical breakthroughs have the potential to bring millions out of povert...

illustration from Worldchanging

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing and Alex Steffen of Worldchanging got together for coffee and had an idea.

"What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. "

"Imagine these folks...Helping rural landowners apply cli...

Former Intel CEO Andry Grove recently wrote an interesting piece on energy. His angle is not totally green, but it's worth reading. Here's a good quote:

"New technology often shows up in this manner: it is not completely satisfactory in the beginning, but good enough to get going. The first personal computers, for example, were little more than toys. They fascinated cognoscenti and hobbyists, but compared to the mainframe computers that were the workhorses of that time, they were limited. PCs quickly grew in capability and eventually reached parity with mainframes and then surpassed them in efficiency and computing power. Such approaches, of starting low and moving up, have been nam...

When Hillside Intermediate began their butterfly garden back in 1997 they probably had no idea that one day it would grow to 7 acres worth of carefully reconstructed wildlife habitat devoted to biodiversity that would earn awards from institutions like the Jane Goodall Institute and National Wildlife Federation. And no one could have predicted the enormous damage inflicted by vandals intent on destroying their hard work, even plugging up the entry to a bluebird box with golf balls and killing the chicks inside.

Of course, there’s often a brighter side when caring, decent human beings work together. And the outp...

Image from Greenpeace

It's bad enough fish already have to deal with the consequences of overfishing; now, according to a new study authored by a team of UBC fisheries scientists, dozens will be faced with the prospect of extinction by 2050. Even slight fluctuations in temperature could cause many cold water species to perish as they attempt to seek out new, more am...

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Scientists may be getting closer to unraveling the secrets of photosynthesis, reports New Scientist Tech's Colin Barras. In a new study published in the journal ChemPhysChem, a team of Chinese scientists from the Hebei Normal University of Science and Technolog...

Image from Reuters/Marcos Brindicci

Cow flatulence and its link to climate change has been a favorite topic for us to cover at TreeHugger. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that we'd jump on a Reuters story describing the climatic implications of cow burps.

Researchers in Argentina have been "collecting" cow burps by strapping big, red plastic tanks to their backs. Just as cow farts are a significant source of methane emissions, so ar...

photo by Amelia Davis

When most followers of renewable energy think of Cape Cod, the first thing they probably think of is the embattled Cape Wind project. That may change if feasibility studies concerning developing tidal energy in between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket prove fruitful.

Cape Cod Times provides the details of two projects currently being investigated:

...

Hydrogen home concept drawing by ITM Power.

We reported on an Australian version of the home hydrogen refueling concept over a year ago. This time, a British company is pushing the same sort of idea forward: Enter the Hydrogen Fridge.

Hydrogen in Your Garage
The BBC is reporting that ITM Power of Sheffield, England has unveiled a hydrogen home refueling station which has been installed in showcase “hydrogen home”. The device works via and electrolyzer to produce hydrogen from wate...

With all the talk about expanding the world's existing wind capacity, there is still surprisingly little attention being paid to the tremendous potential offered by ocean winds -- save for the occasional offshore wind park. Enter NASA: It turns out scientists have been using its QuikSCAT satellite for years to create maps of areas with strong wind activity.

Paul Dimotakis, NASA's chief technologist at Pasadena's Jet P...

photo: Getty Images

Recently the state of Hawaii passed a law requiring new buildings to install solar water heater. Now investors have secured the final funding for another green initiative in the island state: Seawater air conditioning.

The project is titled, appropriately enough, Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning, and is being funded to the tune of $10.75 million by private investors, with the balance of the estimated $152 million in project costs to be covered by US and Swedish investors.
...

Image from little byte of luck

It's not exactly what you might think. While adding water will speed up the mountains' growth, it's not because the rocks themselves are growing -- rather, it's because extreme rain events help buoy the mountains upwards. As Discovery's Larry O'Hanlon reports, a team of researchers, led by Potsdam University's Andrés Mora, has published a new study examining the impact of rain on Colombia's Eastern Cordillera mountains. ...

Mitsubishi's i MiEV Electric Car is Ahead of Schedule
A couple months ago, we got our hands on Mitsubishi's roadmap for its i MiEV electric car. The plan was to lease a few units to fleet customers first in 2009 and then launch it in 2010 (with a focus on Japan, but also in North-America and Europe), but reality is turning out better than even the optimists thought.

Japanese Launch: Summer 2009
The new plan is to launch the retail version of the i MiEV electric car in Japan in the summer of 2009. The reasons are "...

Interface sells carpet to the tune of $1,100,000,000 each year. That is just one reason why the business world listens up when Ray Anderson speaks. Ray describes his ecological awakening as “a spear in the chest,” a wound he has used to both his company’s advantage, and the planet’s. Giving rebirth to 133 million pounds of carpet is just the beginning. Anderson and his design teams are hard at work studying nature’s delicate technologies—like the sticky feet of geckos—to make products better, cleaner, and more beautiful. Here, the founder of Interface share his insights on biomimicry, right-brain thinking, cradle-to-cradle design, and our innate “biophilia.” :...

Full Illustration of Article, complete with lame hockey rink analogy

A new Canadian study looks at the risks of engineered nanomaterials, and raises serious concerns. According to Martin Mittelstaedt in the Globe and Mail, the Council of Canadian Academies was asked by Health Canada to "study the state of knowledge about these novel substances and the regulatory changes needed to oversee their use. They concluded that "there are inadequate data to inform quantitative risk assessments on current and emerging nanomaterials." Their small size, the report says, may allow them "to usur...

photo by greenhem via flickr

We recently reported how China's scheme to ban free plastic bags in stores eems to be working in reducing their consumption, with people apparently turning to the most eco-friendly option: reusable cloth bags. And we also recently presented the low-down on the life-cycle analysis of paper versus plastic bags. Well, Kazuko Nakano, professor of recycling science at Kobe Yamate University in Japan, has...

Water-Powered Car Saga
Last month, we wrote about the Genepax 'Water Car' and were surprised by how many people were ready to believe that it truly worked with water as the only fuel without special explanation or evidence from those who make the claim. Right now the post has 124 comments, which is higher than average for TreeHugger, and a significant portion of those talk about rewriting the laws of physics and such.

A Q...

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Though it may be a bit premature to heap too much praise upon duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza) -- after all, relatively little is still known about its properties -- the early signs, at least according to a team of Rutgers scientists, seem very promising. A team of plant biologists from Rutgers' Waksman Institute of Microbiology have convinced the DOE to focus resources on the genomic sequencing of the diminutive aquatic plant, claiming it holds immeasurable potential for f...

As Mairi Beautyman pointed out not too long ago, The New School in NYC has been taking significant steps in a greener direction by offering degrees for students in environmental programs taking a holistic approach to design through the Tishman Environment and Design Center.

But now there’s word that they’ve begun a new environmental studies program focused on New York City and the urban environment in a bid to help students prepare to tackle the challenges posed by the reality that experts predict that a majority of the world’s population will live, work and play in large ...

Copper Nanorods Reduce Energy Needed by an Order of Magnitude
After super-efficient solar panels that are "hairy" on the nanoscale, here come "hairy" pots & pans, as well as computer chip heatsinks and other heat-transferring devices. Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute made the "unexpected" discovery: "by adding an invisible layer of the nanomaterials to the bottom of a metal vessel, an order of magnitude increase in efficiency is achieved in bringing water to boil. [...] The potential applications for this discovery are vast and exci...