BP is ignoring the most effective and safest means of locking up the oil in zones around the fragile coastal zones of the Gulf Coast. Here’s a quick demonstration of how MOP (Maximum Oil Pickup) sorbent works and can be deployed using the MOP Cannon. It can be introduced above the surface or blown in from below the surface to grab the oil as it rises to the surface. It is 100% recycled material and 100% biodegradable and safe for the environment, animals and people. Tell BP to USE MOP. Pass this on please. Help us spread the word, this will help and it works.

BP has known about the effectiveness of the MOP Product for more than a decade but repeatedly has refused to acknowledge a letter written by their own employee.

Which states –

BP Oil Company
1150 South Metcalf St.
Lima, Ohio 45804-1199

October 25, 1994
To Whom It May Concern:
SUBJECT: MOP Absorbent Product
During four separate occasions we have had the opportunity to observe the MOP absorbent product’s performance. Three were hard surface spills of various hydrocarbon products (i.e. 30w oil, transmission fluid, heavy naphtha, diesel oil, and other blended heavy sop oils). On each occasion the absorbents picked up all of the products leaving no apparent residue. We mixed water at some sights and the hydrophobic properties allowed the absorbent to hold the products while allowing the water to run free and clean of oil.
The other test was with booms and pillows in shore line fresh water. The booms and pillows performed above the standards established by other booms (i.e.polypropylene). The booms had excellent penetrations and adequately contained the product spill. The material is light weight and more economical than the competitive brands we have used.
We are extremely pleased with its performance and cost, and would recommend serious consideration of this product before using an alternative.

Sincerely,
Randal S. Fletcher
Safety Specialist

A new research paper from American academics is threatening to blow a hole in growing political support for carbon capture and storage as a weapon in the fight against global warming.

The document from Houston University claims that governments wanting to use CCS have overestimated its value and says it would take a reservoir the size of a small US state to hold the CO2 produced by one power station.

Previous modelling has hugely underestimated the space needed to store CO2 because it was based on the “totally erroneous” premise that the pressure feeding the carbon into the rock structures would be constant, argues Michael Economides, professor of chemical engineering at Houston, and his co-author Christene Ehlig-Economides, professor of energy engineering at Texas A&M University

“It is like putting a bicycle pump up against a wall. It would be hard to inject CO2 into a closed system without eventually producing so much pressure that it fractured the rock and allowed the carbon to migrate to other zones and possibly escape to the surface,” Economides said.

The paper concludes that CCS “is not a practical means to provide any substantive reduction in CO2 emissions, although it has been repeatedly presented as such by others.”

The report has come at a critical time when British and other governments worldwide have started to fast-track a series of CCS prototype schemes as a way of removing carbon from the atmosphere and helping with climate change.

On 8 April, Royal assent was given on to what is now the Energy Act 2010, which made law plans to raise a levy on power users to establish four CCS projects in Britain. Ministers see this as a potentially planet-friendly way of building new coal fired power stations, such as the one E.ON wants to construct at Kingsnorth, in Kent.

The Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA), which lobbies on behalf of the sector, says Britain is now at the forefront of new technology with a legislative framework in place that offers the opportunity for long-term investment.

Projects are proceeding in the US, such as the experimental coal-fired Mountaineer plant in New Haven, West Virginia, which began small-scale carbon capture last year, as well as in Canada, China and other countries.

Jeff Chapman, chief executive of the CCSA, believes Economides has made inappropriate assumptions about the science and geology. He believes the conclusions in the paper are wrong and says his views are backed up by rebuttals from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Pacific Northwest National laboratory and the American Petroleum Institute.

The British Geological Survey confirmed it was looking at the Economides findings and was hoping to shortly produce a peer-reviewed analysis.

Economides, who has a PHD from Stanford University, said he had seen the arguments against his paper from the API and dismissed them as “nonsense” saying vested interests are protecting a new concept foisted on the world by geologists without proper thought.

“I was a [practising] petroleum engineer for many years and soon realised that geologists did not understand flow and the laws of physics, against which you can’t argue.”

Chapman pointed out that Statoil, a Norwegian oil company, had been injecting CO2 into an old reservoir on the North Sea Sleipner field for some time as a successful experiment in carbon storage. But Economides says the Sleipner scheme involved a million tonnes over three years, while one 500mW commercial station would need to absorb and store 3m tonnes annually for 25 years.Economides, who admits he veers towards being something of a climate change sceptic, says the oil and coal industries see these schemes as potential solutions so they can keep on doing what they have been doing in the past, but “CCS is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” he said.

Source Guardian UK

MarketWatch Soon you’ll be able to watch 3D movies on your television, then use the same TV to communicate with friends via Skype and to adjust your home’s thermostat. MarketWatch’s Amy Hoak reports on the top home-tech trends on the horizon 

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SAN FRANCISCO — The recent Copenhagen climate talks faltered in part over how to verify that nations are actually reducing their carbon emissions. Likewise, the integrity of emissions trading markets, like the one under consideration by the U.S. Congress, will depend on the ability to accurately measure greenhouse gases.

That’s creating a burgeoning global business for Picarro, a Silicon Valley company that makes portable analyzers that take precise real-time measurements of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. The machines also allow scientists to pinpoint the source of emissions.

Monitoring stations scattered around the world in remote locations measure average global concentrations of greenhouse gases. But local emissions are based on estimates, called “inventories,” produced by computer models that follow protocols established by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For instance, methane emissions from vehicles are calculated by multiplying the grams of methane burned per gallon of gasoline by the number of gallons sold.

“It’s accounting, but it’s not measurement,” said Michael Woelk, chief executive of Picarro. “If we’re going to require that nations report truthful emissions, the only way to make that work is to have them verified by scientifically based measurements.”

If a coal-fired power plant sequesters its carbon emissions underground, he said, a monitoring system is needed to ensure that carbon dioxide is not leaking back into the atmosphere. Otherwise, a utility might profit from ill-gotten gains that come from selling carbon credits to which it is not entitled.

“What we’re really talking about is the monetization of the atmosphere,” Mr. Woelk said.

Picarro, which licenses its core technology from Stanford University, has sold a dozen of its $50,000 analyzers to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The China Meteorological Administration has bought 17 of the machines for greenhouse gas monitoring, while in California, the agency charged with implementing the state’s global warming law will deploy Picarro analyzers to measure methane as part of a statewide greenhouse gas-monitoring network.

Depending on topography and weather conditions, an analyzer can cover as much as several hundred miles.

Barry Huebert, a professor at the University of Hawaii, said he ordered a Picarro analyzer for his research into how oceans absorb greenhouse gases.

“We want to take enough actual measurements so we can create an algorithm for climate modeling that’s more realistic about the uptake of CO2 by oceans,” he said at the American Geophysical Union’s recent conference in San Francisco.

He said that while other analyzers were on the market, he chose the Picarro machine for its ability to take continual real-time measurements without needing a highly trained technician to operate the device. “A grad student can do this,” he said.

Researchers at Boston University, meanwhile, have set up a Picarro analyzer in an effort to quantify Boston’s carbon footprint.

To get a real-life demonstration of the machine’s potential to zero in on the source of carbon emissions, I went hunting for greenhouse gas emissions with Chris Rella, Picarro’s director of research and development.

Mr. Rella rolled up in a white Dodge Sprinter van and slid back a door to reveal a rack of Picarro analyzers connected to a video screen that was displaying the concentration of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere around us.

A translucent tube connected to the analyzers snaked through the roof of the van to collect air samples, while a GPS device continuously tracked the van’s location and a wireless modem transmitted all the data back to the Picarro headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. It’s all very “Mission: Impossible.”

As atmospheric gases are drawn into the analyzer, laser beams are shot into an “optical cavity” in the machine.

“Every molecule — carbon, methane — has a different frequency, and every molecule is absorbed at a different wavelength,” Mr. Rella said. “We tune the lasers to the frequency we want to select and measure the amount of absorption.”

That translates into the concentration of a particular greenhouse gas in parts per million.

We headed up the highway toward a complex of oil refineries that lines the east side of San Francisco Bay in the working-class communities of Richmond and Rodeo. The refineries, whose emissions will be capped under California’s global warming law, have long been a source of controversy among some local residents, who believe their health has suffered from pollution from the plants.

The video screen charts methane concentrations on a graph as we drive along, with a new data point appearing every few seconds. Suddenly, the line on the graph spikes upward as the methane concentration shoots from 1.9 parts per million to 2.06 parts per million.

“Look at that — that’s a sizable plume, about 140 parts per billion above the background level of methane,” Mr. Rella said as a hillside dotted with Chevron petroleum storage tanks receded in the rearview mirror.

Methane concentrations spike again after we exit the highway and take a side road that winds around a ConocoPhillips refinery.

But Mr. Rella is puzzled by elevated methane levels that appear elsewhere.

“I’m not sure what that’s all about — maybe some old landfills,” he said.

What the analyzer does not tell us is where those methane plumes originated. To do that, Mr. Rella must look at wind data and weather patterns to identify possible sources of the emissions.

A few hours after Mr. Rella drops me off, he e-mails me a Google Earth mash-up that plots our route along with the emissions data generated by the analyzers.

The methane emissions resemble a city’s skyline, with spikes appearing as office towers. Two big plumes appear adjacent to refineries, while another plume shows up next to a large, empty parcel of land that Mr. Rella speculates may be a landfill, which would be a prime source of methane emissions from decomposing garbage.

California and other Western states are set to roll out cap-and-trade markets in the coming years that would require big polluters to cut their emissions. Those that report reductions beyond their cap can sell credits to companies that exceed their emissions limit.

“If we don’t understand whether our policies are working by measuring emissions in real time, you run the risk of creating an environmental bubble in the market,” said Mr. Woelk, the Picarro chief executive.

Source New York Times

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www.know-the-number.com

Our Climate is Changing!

Greenhouse gas concentrations are frequently expressed as an equivalent amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂). This CO₂-equivalent concentration in parts per million (ppm) can then be expressed in terms of metric ton of CO₂, a standard of measurement, which as a stock of gases in the atmosphere is readily understood.

According to the IPCC AR4 Synthesis Report, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were 379ppm in 2005. The estimate of total CO₂-eq concentration in 2005 for all long-lived GHGs is about 455ppm (see Carbon through History).

On June 18th as the counter started, long-lived GHGs in the atmosphere were estimated to be 3.64 trillion metric tons, growing at 2 billion metric tons per month, or 467 ppm, of which CO₂ was 385 ppm.

The full implications for global warming coming from greenhouse gases are outlined both in the IPCC Synthesis Report and a more recent paper from MIT  looking at the probabilities of warming. To quote MIT’s News Office this is “the most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.” By 2100, surface temperatures could be 5.1 degrees Celsius higher.

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Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said more studies were needed to ensure genetically modified aubergines were safe for consumers and the environment.

The GM vegetable has undergone field trials since 2008 and received approval from government scientists in 2009.

But there has been a heated public row over the cultivation of the GM crop.

The BBC’s Geeta Pandey, who was at the news conference in Delhi, says Mr Ramesh’s decision has put any cultivation of GM vegetables in India on hold indefinitely.

‘Difficult decision’

“Public sentiment is negative. It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary, principle-based approach,” Mr Ramesh said.

He said the moratorium on growing BT brinjal – as the variety of aubergine is known in India – would remain in place until tests were carried out “to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals”.

The minister said “independent scientific studies” were needed to establish “the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment”.

Mr Ramesh said it was “a difficult decision to make” since he had to “balance science and society”.

“The decision is responsible to science and responsive to society,” he said.

India is the largest producer of aubergines in the world and grows more than 4,000 varieties.

Indian seed company Mahyco – partner of US multinational corporation Monsanto – which has developed BT brinjal, says the GM vegetable is more resistant to natural pests.

But anti-GM groups say there are serious health concerns and they allege that consumption of GM crops can even cause cancer.

The government-controlled Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) approved BT brinjal for commercial cultivation in October 2009.

Following an uproar from farmers and anti-GM activists, the environment minister held a series of national consultation meetings across India.

Several of the aubergine-growing Indian states have already said they were opposed to BT brinjal.

India allowed the use of genetically modified seeds for cotton in 2002.

Source BBC News

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