Fish under threat....

as if you needed anymore proof. When are we going to do something about this?

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From "A dangerous appetite for reef fish," IHT:

This fierce appetite for live reef fish across Southeast Asia - and increasingly in mainland China - is devastating populations in the Coral Triangle, a protected marine region home to the world's richest ocean diversity, according to a recent report in the scientific journal Conservation Biology. Spawning of reef fish in this area, which supports 75 percent of all known coral species in the world, has declined 79 percent over the past five to 20 years, depending on location, according to the report.

Report accuses International Energy Agency of obstructing a global switch to renewable energy by publishing misleading data | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Report accuses International Energy Agency of obstructing a global switch to renewable energy by publishing misleading data | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "International Energy Agency 'blocking global switch to renewables'
International Energy Agency accused of consistently underestimating potential of wind, solar and sea power while promoting oil, coal and nuclear as 'irreplaceable' technologies"

Jim Hansen's letter to the Obamas

Jim Hansen (one of the first NASA scientists who pointed to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s) has written a 4-page letter to the Obamas which strongly advocates the following actions on climate:

1. Ban coal power plants without CCS
2. Introduce a universal carbon tax with 100% dividend
3. Speed up R&D of the 4th generation of nuclear power plants.

The letter is worth reading in its entirety.

Oil prices are set to spike again - The Economist

The Economist, Nov 6th 2008

Oil prices have plunged. Another spike may be on its way
AP

WITH the price of crude mired at half the peak of $147 it reached in July, this may seem like an odd time to invest in oil wells. Despite trimming its output along with other members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in an effort to prop up prices, that is just what the United Arab Emirates plans to do. Short-term price movements, its oil minister insists, should not distract from the world’s enduring thirst for oil. Indeed the collapse of oil prices, one of the few reasons around for economic cheer, may be setting the stage for another spike.

The article notes that the prices below $70/barrel are not sustainable for investing in such projects as oil sands (ca $90/barrel). While the cost of raw materials drops, the cost of capital rises, thus further deferring the investementt.

Eating carbon

Nov 13th 2008

From The Economist print edition

There is a type of rock with a voracious appetite for carbon dioxide

ONE way of helping to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is to pump the gas into underground caverns or old oil fields. But there is also a rock that is happy to gobble it up, and according to the latest research its appetite for the greenhouse gas is not only massive but could also be increased by a little human intervention.

The rock is peridotite, which is one of the main rocks in the upper mantle, an area that provides a girth below the Earth's crust. The rock occurs some 20km or more down, although in areas where plate tectonics have forced up some of the mantle, peridotite reaches the surface. This happens in part of the Omani desert which Peter Kelemen and Juerg Matter, both from Columbia University, New York, have studied for years.

Geologists have long known that when peridotite is exposed to the air it can react quickly with carbon dioxide to form carbonates like limestone or marble. Some people have looked at the idea of grinding up peridotite and using it to soak up emissions from power stations, but the process turns out to be expensive, partly because of the costs of transporting all the rock. The transportation would also create emissions. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Published online before print November 3, 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0805794105 PNAS November 11, 2008 vol. 105 no. 45 17295-17300), Messrs Kelemen and Matter suggest an alternative: pumping the gas from places where it is produced and into underground strata of peridotite.

The team has shown that the Omani peridotite absorbs tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, far more than anyone had thought. By drilling and fracturing the rock they believe they can start a process to increase the absorption rate by 100,000 times or more. They estimate this would allow the Omani outcrop, which extends down some 5km, alone to absorb some 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which is a substantial part of the annual 30 billion or so tonnes of the gas that humans send into the atmosphere, mostly by burning fossil fuels.

With such rocks situated in an area of the world where an increasing amount of energy is produced and consumed, it potentially provides a convenient carbon sink for the region's energy industry, say the researchers. Peridotite can also be found at the surface in other parts of the world, including some Pacific islands, along the coasts of Greece and Croatia, and in smaller deposits in America. Nor is it the only rock with carbon-eating potential. The researchers are now looking at volcanic basalt in a new project in Iceland.

What's exciting about this method and others based on accelerated weathering of ultramafic rocks is that they could in principle yield more energy than just burning fossil fuels. The reaction of carbon dioxide with ultramafic rock leaves products that are more thermodynamically stable. Unlike sequestration in soils, forests, old mines or brines, there is no prospect that the carbon dioxide will escape from the stable geologic form; it is thermodynamically locked into the rock.

It isn't clear that removal of carbon dioxide from the general atmosphere is the best way to do this. Sequestration at coal burning plants near ultramafic rock outcrops, asbestos mine tailings, and steel mills would probably be more effective.

See http://www.energy.columbia.edu/mineral-carbon
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002340.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_sink#Mineral_sequestration