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Heat is Power Association Launches


In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama called upon an America built to last, “an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values.” Today, the Heat is Power Assoc…

Hydrokinetic Technologies: Will the U.S. Lose Ocean Energy to Europe?


The earth is the water planet, so it should come as no great surprise that forms of water power have been one of the world’s most popular “renewable” energy sources.

NOAA Reports Record Ocean Surface Temperatures for June


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported findings of preliminary analysis from the agency’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina that shows global ocean surface temperatures for June broke the previous record set in 2005.

Fertilizer’s Contamination Legacy


Perchlorate-contaminated groundwater could be a widespread legacy of the U.S.’s agricultural past, according to researchers who have pioneered perchlorate forensics. The researchers, led by John Karl Bhlke of the U.S. Geological Survey, used isotopes and other geochemical tracers to identify perchlorate sources. The impact of the historic use of Chilean nitrate fertilizer from the Atacama Desert, which contains naturally occurring perchlorate, is emerging from studies such as one published recently in ES&T.

Are Aluminum Bottles Greener than Glass?


Aluminum as a substitute for glass bottles has been inching its way into the consumer experience in the last few years, most notably in the US in the form of beer bottles from Anheuser-Busch and Iron City Beer, a popular regional brand founded in Pittsburgh. Coca-cola has also announced plans to roll out aluminum bottles in this country, though only in limited venues.

G8 Urges Economic Stability Measures, Fails to Pass Climate Bill


Today in L’Aquila, Italy, the Group of 8 (G8) Summit failed to pass unanimously a climate bill which would have mandated halving of global CO2 emissions by 2050 as part of the Group’s larger economic-stabilization plan. The Group – consisting of the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, and Russia – believed passage of the bill would likely have broken the deadlock over sharing of the burden of cutting greenhouse gasses. The bill’s passage also would have laid the groundwork for an expected future U.N. climate pact in Copenhagen in December.

Chinese Companies Creating Better Green Products


Ten companies received Business Week’s (BW) Greener China Business Awards. Although still the world’s biggest user of coal powered energy, China is emerging as an “incubator for clean technology,” as BW puts it.

Sediment yields climate record for past half-million years


Researchers here have used sediment from the deep ocean bottom to reconstruct a record of ancient climate that dates back more than the last half-million years.

The record, trapped within the top 20 meters (65.6 feet) of a 400-meter (1,312-foot) sediment core drilled in 2005 in the North Atlantic Ocean by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, gives new information about the four glacial cycles that occurred during that period.

New research was presented June 15th at the Chapman Conference on Abrupt Climate Change at Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center. The meeting is jointly sponsored by the American Geophysical Union and the National Science Foundation.

Harunur Rashid, a post-doctoral fellow at the Byrd Center, explained that experts have been trying to capture a longer climate record for this part of the ocean for nearly a half-century. “We’ve now generated a climate record from this core that has a very high temporal resolution, one that is decipherable at increments of 100 to 300 years,” he said.

America’s Addiction Fuels Desire For Coffee Ground Biodiesel


Researchers are reporting they have successfully made a high quality biodiesel from spent coffee grounds. They estimate that the coffee ground biodiesel industry could generate as much as $8,000,000 in profits annually using waste from US Starbucks stores alone.

Newest Source of Biofuel: Fungus


Researchers claim that the fungus, Gliocladium roseum, has the ability to produce a plethora of unique combinations of hydrogen and carbon molecules unlike any organism in the world, and the product is remarkably similar to the diesel we use to fuel our cars. And, according to a recently published issue of Microbiology, scientists are currently working to develop its fuel producing potential. So, someday, we might be filling up our cars tanks with hydrocarbons derived from fungus instead of fossil fuel!

Green Technology and Environmental Science News - ENN