This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Arctic: The Final Energy Frontier
Via Stratfor's Chart of the Day,
The Arctic is expected to become more important in the coming decades as climate change makes natural resources and transport routes more accessible. Satellite data collected since 1979 shows that both the thickness of the ice in the Arctic and range of sea ice have decreased substantially, especially during the summer months. According to the United States' National Snow and Ice Data Center, the amount of Arctic ice (usually at a minimum during September) was 3.61 million square kilometers (1.39 million square miles) in September 2012 -- close to 49 percent lower than the average amount of ice seen between 1979 and 2000.
The melting of the ice facilitates natural resource exploration in the high north. U.S. Geological Survey estimates from 2008 suggest that 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas reserves are located in the Arctic Circle.
Reflecting the growing interest in the region, the Arctic Council granted six new countries (China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore) observer status during a May 15 ministerial meeting in Kiruna, Sweden. By admitting more observers, the Arctic Council -- an organization that promotes cooperation among countries with interests in the Arctic -- will likely become more important as a forum for discussions on Arctic issues. However, this does not necessarily mean it will be able to establish itself as a central decision-making body regarding Arctic matters.
»
- 11815 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Is the reason that geologists estimate that 13% of the world's undiscovered oil is underneath the Artic because the region encompasses about 13% of the Earth's area, or has extensive exploration been conducted?
http://dareconomics.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/around-the-globe-05-20-2013/
cuz there's more than oil and nat gas in those there parts. same goes for near earth asteroids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object and that means this cool toy for a next group of tech billionaires that are being minted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining
Amazingly we've made the final frontier accessible by launching our own self destruct sequence.
Mankind is doomed.
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2013/05/premiere-for-somewhere-in-new-mexi...
How much does a 40' * 80' lot in Greenland go for?
As Guy McPherson explains, "Earth’s temperature is already nearly 2 C higher than the industrial-revolution baseline. And because of positive feedbacks, 2 C leads directly and rapidly to 6 C, acidification-induced death of the world’s oceans, and the near-term demise of Homo sapiens"
There won't be time to drill in the Artic. McPherson says we only have 16 1/2 years left to live anyway.
http://guymcpherson.com/2012/06/were-done/
Yeah... maybe not.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023
"in the coming decades as climate change makes natural resources and transport routes more accessible."
what a effin pipe dream, there is no end to this delusion.......well there is.....stay tuned
I for one am not waiting for hell to freeze over, or Arctic ice to magically disappear. Anyone who looks up the ice pack photos know it ain't happening.
Now it's just getting stupid.
Something most people forget, not having been to the Arctic, is that there is 24 hour sunlight in the (short) summer. And 24 hr darkness in the (long) winter.
The winter cold is long, but the number of dark days exactly equals the number of light days
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
rotflmao... ... (maybe you forgot to type in <sarc> after your statement?)
Or maybe he just got hi pole wrong. Antarctic Ice has been growing and thickening. GW activists are having a hard time explaining why this is do to global warming.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121013-antarctica-sea-ic...
It's quite simple, actually, and you would understand it if you lived in a cold climate.
As the weather warms, but is still below freezing, the air can hold more and more moisture, so it actually tends to snow MORE the warmer it is --- given, of course, that the temperature remains below freezing. That is the primary reason why, for example, the coastal areas of Alaska recieve much more snow than the interior (which is much colder in the winter) does, and why any given location tends to receive much more snow when the temperatures are in the 20s than when it is well below zero.
Most of Antarctica, based on total annual precipitation, is actually technically a desert. It is only because the snow effectively does not melt which allows the ice sheets there to build up and persist. As it has warmed, but still remains overall below freezing, it is only natural that more snow would tend to fall, and the glaciers and ice sheets build up. Past a certain point of warming, of course, the opposite will begin to happen, and melting will predominate --- as it has worldwide on every other continent (and even in the arctic, which tends to be warmer than Antarctica) over the past century.
1 very small problem with your explanation, its about SEA-ice. And sea-ice is not formed by snow, it is formed by sea water freezing. So the colder it gets, the bigger the area of sea ice.
Perhaps you are not aware that Antarctica, unlike the arctic, is a continent, with much of it lying at an elevation of greater than one mile? Yes, there is sea ice around its edges, but most of the Antarctic ice is actually on land.
Euh, yes, i know this, but... the ice the are talking about, is sea ice, so ice that is not on land.
Hint... the title of the artikel is: "Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Record ... High?"
And the picture on the artikel shows the ice, outside of the land mass, so again, sea ice.
Is it so difficult to read/understand the artikel?
Logged in just for the pleasure of junking blatant ignorance. Or analphabetism? No can't be, so I cite from the article that you obviously didn't read but still according to you proves we're moving towards ice age...:
"If the world was warming up uniformly, you would expect the sea ice cover to decrease in the Antarctic, but it's not. The reason for that is because the Antarctic is cooler than the rest of the world. It's warming up as well but not as fast as other places.
So you have the warming world and a cold Antarctica, and the difference between the two is increasing. That makes the winds around Antarctica move a little bit faster."
It's warming up, just not as fast. More umidity in the air from all other continents warming up: more snow in the antarctic.
Perhaps it depends upon who is making the claims re global temperatures.
Regarding the Arctic: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_22/Cooling-in-the-Arctic-what-to-expect/
Other related thougts:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/05/baffled-german-government-concedes-global-warming-has-stopped-warming-pause-is-remarkable-unexpected/
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/03/little-ice-age-is-coming-in-2014-2585776.html
There is not consensus on the future temperature trends. What we do know is that AGW is a political ploy to allow further control of the sheeple.
Actually you don't have a warming world. There has been no warming for 17yrs according to Hadley CRU data and none for 23yrs if you want to believe the satelite dataset.
This fact has even been confirmed by the climate science chairman of the IPCC itself.
No warming for 17-23yrs even as CO2 has increased each and every year. Seems to be an odd juxtaposition of facts and rhetoric. The world is warming we are told, only it isn't but it sure seems like it because we can point to perfectly normal, although rare phenomenae and claim CLIMATE CHANGE!
We DO in fact have a warming world, and I can offer you one conclusive and undeniable fact in support of that statement: the worldwide (aside from parts of Antarctica) melting and retreat of icecaps and glaciers, from Greenland to Africa to Europe to the Himalayas to South America to New Guinea. There is a demonstrated and rapid feedback between rising temperatures and melting and thinning glacial ice, so if the world overall were cooling as you claim, then the retreat, thinning and melting of global glaciers would have halted very shortly after such a trend began --- but exactly the opposite continues to be observed.
Actually we've had warmer years across the entire planet 12 years in a row, all published by NASA with infrared thermal readings on a map, a global map, every single year.
ALSO you can check every day what temperatures are reported, and archived, from weather network sites that are all around the PLANET and they are indeed getting warmer.
Actually, I believe that it is you who does not understand either the thread of the conversation here OR the original article itself.
My post was in response to the one directly above it by MissionDweller, talking about the seeming paradox of shrinking Arctic sea ice and growing Antarctic (mostly land) ice.
The original article discusses shrinking Arctic sea ice --- it never touches on Antarctica in any way. Maybe you are not aware of the nuances of the vocabulary here, but "Arctic" refers ONLY to the polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, while "Antarctic" refers to the polar regions of the Southern Hemisphere.
The article is titled - "Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Record ... High?"
What article are you talking about?
The article here is titled "The Arctic: The Final Energy Frontier".
Antarctic? If the co2 production, methane releases, are all local and dispersion away from the sources makes the concentration very low over the south pole, that’s a very clear explanation. Not a correlation but a CAUSATION.
There is one big thing reducing the artic ice. And one little thing.
The big thing is diversion or drought of the Russian rivers flowing north. Longer winters mean less total precipitation to flow north. What difference does that make? Higher arctic salinity. With higher salinity, you can have both lower temperatures and less ice. Magic.
The little thing is the increase in the use of transarctic transportation. The ships and icebreakers churn and loosen the ice so it melts faster and drifts away.
All magic, I say.
The photos show less ice every year so yes, it is happening.
Be careful about those secret Nazi and UFO bases!
... at the ANTarctic
You sound like you know a little bit too much, friend...
I'm sure they'll take great care not to pollute, poison and destroy one of the most valuable ecosystems left on the earth
The Arctic? 'valuable ecosystems" - says who? The 'red' Greenies?
Edit:
The Arctic: POSSIBLY the most inhospitable place on the face of the earth.
"Most inhospitable place" doesn't contradict "valuable ecosystem", pal. Basic knowledge.
For 'americans', it must.
Ecosystem = a community of living organisms
Most inhospitable would seem to contradict "valuable ecosystem" unless of course a few odd ice bound microbes constitutes a valuable ecosystem.
I guess beauty and VALUE lay in "the eye of the beholder"....
The "red" greenies will happily support the green weenies in America in their efforts to keep the US from getting involved (so they can acquire assets with less competition), much like the "red" greenies in China are all for environmental standards in the US, so factories will have natural business case to migrate to China, and China is only interested in improving the Chinese environment, when the effort is subsidized by foreign greenies. Mercantilism is alive and well, monetarism serves to mask the dearth of underlying assets (collateral) which they both covet.
3000 different plant species
130 mammal species
280 species of birds
3000 species of insects
450 species of fish
and 4 lizards. to cold for them.
Right.
Alaska is feeling one of the COLDEST winters on record ... and the "Nenana Ice Classic sets new record for latest ice-out" ...
Fucking tell me about it!
Just two days ago, on Saturday, I woke up to FOUR INCHES of new snow here in Southcentral ---- and I live at sea level! The birch and cottonwood trees STILL have not even popped their buds yet. This is far and away the coldest spring on record just about everywhere in Alaska.
One of my favorite hikes was there on Pioneer peak (North summit)....damn, what a view of Knik Glacier and the ice field.
The upper part of that hike completely freaked me out --- but I don't like being on the edges of precipices very much. The views are utterly amazing, though, agreed.
Only assholes that have never been to AK(or anywhere north for that matter) after another long winter appreciate how awesome spring and summer is, would junk your comment. WTF?
http://www.sott.net/article/261961-Anchorage-Alaska-sets-new-record-for-longest-snow-season-232-days
The link is self-explanatory.
Hmmmm. Unusual amounts of precipitation. Sea level rising as polar ice caps melt. Causal relationships? Perhaps science makes your head hurt.
The ice off the north pole floats in the sea, so if it melts, the total volume it become's as water is the same as the volume it displace's as ice, so no rise in sea level. Is this making your head hurt?
Yeah, that is right.
Icebergs have no tip.
Signed: an American.
Euh, the hight of the iceberg has nothing to do with it. take a glas of water, put an ice cube in it, than put a line on the water level. When the ice melts, the water level stays the same. Basic fysics, signed: an european.
physics FAIL.
Now try holding ice cubes OVER the glass of water, not in it, and see if the water rises as they melt. Much of the ice is NOT FLOATING but is ON A LAND SHELF next to the water.
AnAnonymous fails science class (again):
Stupid comment, just like your comment that the earth and sun can be considered a closed system in terms of thermodynamics.
Ice floats because it is less dense than water, thus accounting for the iceberg tip.
Time to backpedal, Lance AnArmsrtonymous.
No, icebergs have no tips because all the tips are sawn off and carried away by the parangongs of monolizing the resource means, the rapacious Chinese consumptionizers, in their zeal to blob-up all the world's resources.
And that explains why the Titanic/Olympic never saw the iceberg ahead of them: no above-water tips.
Do you have have a boat?, have you ever heard of displacement? You might want to look up "Eureka, I've found it!"
INCORRECT. Any ice that came off a LAND SHELF such as Greenland wasn't floating in the water and so had zero displacement as a solid. This is REAL science and YOU are no scientist.
That's some crack work akak. Unusually cold weather in the spring must disprove global warming. It's 90 degrees at 8:00 p.m. here in Southeastern Michigan and just last week I was in a hat and gloves watching my son's baseball game.
Stop being a rube man.
Supposed to be 60s here in N IL after tomorrow. The weather does what it wants- it is the hubris of man to think we can affect it.
What the hell does this comment have to do with global warming? It's the ignorance of a man who can't see causal relationships.
Track solar output, forget AGW. What was mankind doing about a thousand years ago when they decided on the 'Green' part of Greenland's name? And what did mankind stop doing that brought on the Little Ice Age?
Stick to accounting.
Already has been tracked. Solar output has no strong correlation; the reason is that solar output is not all photons, some are charged particles that never hit the Earth. As for the photons, those which are incoming aren’t all infrared (heat) until AFTER hitting the Earth, not on the way in. It’s the earth-sourced infrared being deflected back to the surface by excess methane, co2 and h2o vapor causing the problem. That’s been measured & proven. You can of course measure solar wattage on the surface all over the place. It’s worth noting where atmosphere blocks photons from getting TO the ground and turning into infrared there.
wow, talk about delusional.
please explain to us how TSI is a totally comprehensive representation of the sun's effects and how that single coefficient may be employed to represent all of it, even solar cycles, in the models.
oh, right, the sun doesnt matter. what utter and complete moron came up with that tripe???
how's about this, start solving from a radiative physics standpoint, then tell me what room is left.
if you do that accurately and honestly, you see that CO2 is nothing but a way for politicians to scam tax dollars.
show me what model even predicted the sunspot funk we had in 09-10....shoew me the model that explains the effects we're seeing from it, why 11-12 SHOULD have produced an el nino but didnt, and hey, hansen was betting this solar cycle was going to be a raging one! well it would have needed to be if he wanted his loose correlation to co2 to be closer to reality, but we're watching a low amplitude double dip solar cycle right now.
keep telling yourself it doesnt matter what happens to that burning glob of 99% of the entire mass of our solar system. we'll keep laughing at you.
If your claim was right then the moon and every planet in our solar system would be getting proportionally the same effects, the moon being right next to us as very obvious. Yet none of that is true.
It is actually a weak correlation, not causation.
It’s hubris to think we CAN’T affect all the while changing everything the weather is made of – every chemical in the air, everything in the water, everything in the thermals for the land from our cities. The weather comes FROM THIS. It’s not from the sun, or the moon would have weather just like Earth, numpties.
please read that again and reply back and tell us how stupid that sounds.
I mean really. nobody that isnt falling for the AGW tripe is sitting here saying that humans dont affect anything whatsoever. what we're saying is that CO2 DOES NOT DO WHAT YOU THINK IT DOES.
all this co2 focus is doing is taking away from REAL environmental efforts and concerns.
we're all familiar with the term MALINVESTMENT here, yes??
CO2 does exactly what I think it does: we can experimentally prove it any time by firing infrared at it and watching what infrared is deflected, absorbed and transmitted. Anyone can do this experiment at any time.
Well, the stats say that Alaska experienced one of the coldest winter in 3 decades (the 21th century as some are hyping), NOT on record.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/brrrrrrrr-last-year-coldest-three-...
You may want to look at the Arctic Sea Ice Update (doesn't address local variations just total sea ice coverage for the arctic)
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
And I just read this earlier today.....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2013/may/13/newtok-ala...
With regards to your link to the article written by Anthony Watts from Whats Up With That, you should be aware that his funding comes from the Heartland Institute... aka currently funded by the KOCH Brothers............ (deep sigh and rolling eyes....) the Heartland institute is the same group that worked with Phillip Morris to lobby against the science regarding the dangers of second hand smoke....
But hey believe what you want.... maybe the Koch brothers are spending this kind of money for the "betterment of man kind" and "science"....... lol
As opposed to global warming "scientists" who tens of BILLIONS for research from the gubmint?
Please! WHo's fooling who?
Oh my, we got one of those a "its a all a conspiracy" types running around...
So given the money thrown around by the Kochs it would be simple to show real data that discredits the whole AGW theory. Twenty million a year can fund some serious data collection and the expertise to analyse it.
DO YOU KNOW WHY?
THE PAID FOR DENIERS CANNOT PRODUCE ANY PEER REVIEWABLE SELF CONSISTENT ANALYSIS TO SHOW THAT AGW IS NOT THE CAUSE.
So get over it and learn to accept it...
AGW is paid-for political nonsense and there is plenty of evidence to refute it. Back around 1980 I was told that where I live, southeastern Florida, would be under water by the year 2000. But I still need a boat to have a boating accident, I can't just dump stuff in my front yard to lose it underwater.
You are either making shit up, or you spoke to a fool re: 2000...
The only conspiracy out there is the one to create confusion and doubt by the exact same people that disputed the dangers of tobacco smoke...
Now run along and educate yourself...
"AGW is paid-for political nonsense and there is plenty of evidence to refute it."
Yep, plenty of desperate "evidence" from the usual suspects of bought-and-paid-for denialists for Tobacco, Asbestos, CFC/ozone and now climate change, using both old and tired and previously many times debunked myths, and the new strawman-of-the-month from the denial mill, which those in the know could spend an entire lifetimes debunking to a hard core of denialists with poor scientific knowledge and often even poorer debate behavior.
Flaker Get that crap out of here and stop hiding being the totally captured PAL REVIEW process. We all know what the government wants, it subsidizes the shit out of.
This all stemmed from morons like Hansen finding out that aerosols have THE POTENTIAL to break up ozone - voila! There we have our reason for the ozone hole! NOT - the reason is entirely natural, but it didnt keep them from running with it - and it didnt keep them from disavowing it once the natural mechanism was discovered.
Once it started warming, why abandon our efforts now? Hey, let's find a new scapegoat and give it a preposterous coefficient to balance out that misplaced emphasis on madmade aerosols!
All of these disastrous predictions are flippant artifacts from models that only loosely resembles reality at best. How's them predictions again?
Meanwhile, let's also treat TSI as a totally comprehensive representation of the sun's effect on the earth and not look any deeper and find the flaws therein - TSI doesnt cover a lot of the UV differences that the sunspot cycle produces.
No amount of "koch money" is going to cover the sucking chest wounds in the AGW meme. No amount of government money will convince those of integrity that our exhalations are going to all of a sudden turn into a positive feedback.
Nor will it change that very significant overlap in CO2 energy absorption by WATER VAPOR.
Stop shilling, FFS.
No amount of strawmen will save the AGW denialists from the facts.
Whats worse is that by the time humanity stands to pay the bill for decades of energy exuberance, none of the denialists will be there to face responsibility for their contribution to that there wasn't taken any sufficient action.
The rest of us will have to piss on your graves in a deteriorating world, which was robbed of its goodies by those who didn't give a shit about anyone but themselves and their scorched-earth ideology.
This is so full of shit on so many levels that one does not know where to start...
For example, You are not allowed to simply propagate made up shit about IR spectroscopy...
Whereas I suggest *you* start here:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
Go ahead and keep parroting your alarmist claptrap, I'm just going to sit back and watch your assertions get proven wrong by the test of time. How's them predictions, again? Having problems predicting? Ok, recalibrate! Every time - EVERY TIME - the models have to be redone and recalibrated to reality so that even short term predictions are accurate.
Then the models need moar and moar fine tuning to even RETRODICT with any supposed accuracy?
Get that BS out of here dude. The models are such a wildly loose representation of reality, its like comparing someone's actual face to a dali-melted caricature.
But go ahead and tell me I'm full of shit, then step right back away with idiotic notions of its so bad you wouldnt even know where to start. If you had a fkn clue, you'd know exactly where to start.
But, you believe in AGW, you believe CO2 is some positive feedback - so you are a fucking moron, case closed, and no amount of government funding is going to change that, or the fact that CO2 is a pithy third order pissant that takes the way back seat to the rest of the far more abundant effects.
And my mentioning the CFCs and bad assertions of manmade aerosols being scapegoat for the ozone hole was a history lesson, not a technical analysis.
"Every time - EVERY TIME - the models have to be redone and recalibrated to reality so that even short term predictions are accurate."
So, we should just stick to the notion that the earth is flat? And, airplane manufacturers shouldn't change their modeling?
FACT: The climate changes.
FACT: Ocean currents are affected by the salinity levels of the water.
FACT: There are, in addition to the period referred to as "inter-glacial periods" such as we're currently in, GLACIAL PERIODS.
FACT: Carbon is VERY important to all living things on this planet, and by direct association, the planet's environment.
I WILL most definitely agree with you that models are not exact and that it's pretty tough to single out anything and state that it's the SINGLE "cause" of something, not when this ecosystem is as complex as it is.
ALL that transpires does so, in the BIG PICTURE, on a natural basis in geologic time. Humans have been able to speed up time via the use of stored energy. The LOGIC is pretty clear that humans DO have an impact on the environment.
Glacial activity is what helps deliver a fresh round of minerals to/for our soils, which is essential for plant-growth. Glacial activity can therefore be thought of a a big re-till. We might be able to slow down this entry into the next glacial period, but we cannot stop it- in the end it'll all be moot.
Well done.
If by well done you mean parroting the standard circle jerk nonsense from sites like WUWT then I suppose you have a point...
So is the science wrong or is it a conspiracy? Show real evidence of either..
I can wait but since you can't why don;t you simply STFU...
Since you have to ignore the Mann et al whitewash, you see no evil, hear no evil.
You probably still believe in the integrity of the peer review process where the climate is concerned, and no, nobody did anything unscupulous, just like everyone in the government and banks, too, right?
Clutching at straws, Mann et al and the Hockey stick have been vindicated so many times it is now a hockey team..
See http://skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
He’s right, he’s proven he’s right, he’s proven you’re wrong a million times over so for fuck’s sake stop buying the hoax that global warming is a hoax. We can prove it with every thermometer on the planet and we HAVE.
Now is that using Hansen's big black box number crunched data?
"As opposed to global warming "scientists" who tens of BILLIONS for research from the gubmint?"
Perhaps over all history and all nations.
As opposed to the coal & oily businesses where tens of billions is the revenue of a single company for a single year.
"Please! WHo's fooling who?"
Seems like youre trying to fool yourself.
you really need to do a little more robust sleuthing than that. we call that sort of sleuthing "drinking kool aid"
This is what real sleuthing looks like:
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/
Its sad that sleuthing has to be done to figure out what's in the black box number crunchers these dishonest fuckers use - "why would I release my methodology when your sole aim is to discredit it?" Spoken like a true eunuch!
The dishonest fuckers in this case were McIntyre and Wegman who, you will be pleased to know were trying to discredit Mann and failed...
And if you can't figure out what they were doing, you should really STFU
Clearly you’ve been fooled. Science proving global warming is real is easily replicated by any of us here.
People have been saying that there are massive amounts of frozen methane at the bottom of the arctic ocean... As the Arctic ice melts, so will the methane resulting in massive amounts of atmospheric methane and a greenhouse effect that will make CO2 related greenhouse effect look like the depths of winter in Frostbite Falls by comparison.
So all the energy companies need to do is wait at the surface of the ocean and collect the gas as it bubbles to the surface ... a vertiable goldmine and probably wortha NFLX-like PE on any exchange.
The day after I drink large quantities of beer, I am responsible for massive amounts of atmospheric methane.
Let it sit. The present is to corrupt/inept to get it up without fucking up. I like clean food more than i like megaprofits for megacorps.
Disconnect; what does this have to do with 'clean food'? Did we miss something? Is there hidden print in the story only YOU can see?
he only eats fish and seafood from the Artic ocean.
THAT'S what i missed ...
It's just some bullshit man, because Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas are now obsolete as an energy source!
Years ago I thought of how nice it would be get electricity from the trees on my property. Well, that might be coming.
http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/power-plants-uga-researchers-explor...
Athens, Ga. - The sun provides the most abundant source of energy on the planet. However, only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation on Earth is converted into useful energy.
To help solve this problem, researchers at the University of Georgia looked to nature for inspiration, and they are now developing a new technology that makes it possible to use plants to generate electricity.
"Clean energy is the need of the century," said Ramaraja Ramasamy, assistant professor in the UGA College of Engineering and the corresponding author of a paper describing the process in the Journal of Energy and Environmental Science. "This approach may one day transform our ability to generate cleaner power from sunlight using plant-based systems."
Plants are the undisputed champions of solar power. After billions of years of evolution, most of them operate at nearly 100 percent quantum efficiency, meaning that for every photon of sunlight a plant captures, it produces an equal number of electrons. Converting even a fraction of this into electricity would improve upon the efficiency seen with solar panels, which generally operate at efficiency levels between 12 and 17 percent.
During photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, which produces electrons. These newly freed electrons go on to help create sugars that plants use much like food to support growth and reproduction.
"We have developed a way to interrupt photosynthesis so that we can capture the electrons before the plant uses them to make these sugars," said Ramasamy, who is also a member of UGA's Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.
Ramasamy's technology involves separating out structures in the plant cell called thylakoids, which are responsible for capturing and storing energy from sunlight. Researchers manipulate the proteins contained in the thylakoids, interrupting the pathway along which electrons flow.
These modified thylakoids are then immobilized on a specially designed backing of carbon nanotubes, cylindrical structures that are nearly 50,000 times finer than a human hair. The nanotubes act as an electrical conductor, capturing the electrons from the plant material and sending them along a wire.
In small-scale experiments, this approach resulted in electrical current levels that are two orders of magnitude larger than those previously reported in similar systems.
Ramasamy cautions that much more work must be done before this technology reaches commercialization, but he and his collaborators are already working to improve the stability and output of their device.
"In the near term, this technology might best be used for remote sensors or other portable electronic equipment that requires less power to run," he said. "If we are able to leverage technologies like genetic engineering to enhance stability of the plant photosynthetic machineries, I'm very hopeful that this technology will be competitive to traditional solar panels in the future."
"We have discovered something very promising here, and it is certainly worth exploring further," he said. "The electrical output we see now is modest, but only about 30 years ago, hydrogen fuel cells were in their infancy, and now they can power cars, buses and even buildings."
The full study, which was co-authored by UGA graduate student Jessica Calkins and postdoctoral research associate Yogeswaran Umasankar, is available at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2013/ee/c3ee40634b.
While I have no problem with the overall concept of using vegetation to generate electricity, I have to point out that photons cannot produce electrons out of nothing. Nor can splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen produce electrons. Photons can separate electrons from an atom (or molecule), but not 'produce' them in the sense of creating new ones. It would be more correct to say that photons can 'free' electrons. This has been common knowledge for a long time. Read up on the photoelectric effect.
Plants are designed to use resources from their environment. Sometimes for thousands of years.
"However, only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation on Earth is converted into useful energy."
This should more correctly read as:
"However, only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation on Earth is converted into EXPLOITABLE energy."
Only some chalkboard scientist would make the claim that WASTE is occurring. Even a back-yard gardener understands that solar energy is required to heat soils in order for (their cultivated) plants to grow.
As is quite typical, folks toss something out there without allowing the fundamental premise to be questioned: in this case we're supposed to automatically believe in the "waste" premise.
it is clear russia needs to be taken out by the empire.
Too bad global cooling nka global warming nka climate change is a complete and total fraud. It's hilarious, really. Look at it this way:
No matter what's happening: cooling, warming, extreme weather
It's still the fault of mankind producing too much greenhouse gases. Except for the fact that the CO2 level has nothing to do with the average earthly temperature. The globe stopped warming in 1998. No matter. We're still all gonna die unless we pass these draconian laws that will destroy our industry. Except for the fact that China and India are exempt from them.
Life is a whole lot easier when one can pull facts straight out of their ass. Isn't that right Blue Dog? Tool.
Facts like these?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-st...
I hope you guys are right because the co2 in the the atmosphere just hit 400ppm.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/14/record-400ppm-co2-carbon-emissions
It's easy question global average temp calcs because it isn't easy to measure but you could measure CO2 yourself with the right equipment. Do you really think that several hundered years of pumping tons of shit in the atomsphere has no effect on the climate?
No one knows, climate is chaos.
Say again with me : Climate is chaos.
Hence, we can't predict, we can't model patterns, we can't find the patterns.
Now look at the suvival rate of the planet, and the ones of dinosaurs or mammals.
The planete and the climate are fine. The living creatures are fucked up. BIG DIFFERENCE.
And NASA recently reported that CO2 in the thermosphere is conducive to atmospheric cooling, not warming. The biggest greenhouse gas is actually water vapor, or so I've read. That's why I cringed when a certain car company was proclaiming the wonders of their prototype hydrogen-powered car. They said it was wonderful that the only byproduct was pure water, not some nasty hydrocarbon gas. I also wondered why a place such as southeastern Florida, where I live, would ever allow any vehicle that added to the already overwhelming humidity.
You can check this fact very easily.
Greenhouse effect means that there is a low variation of T° between night and day.
The only places on Earth where there is a tiny difference between day and night are tropical area : with a lot of water.
Anywhere else, you may have 10, 20, 30, even 40°C of difference between noon and midnight. Move to some part of Africa, you'll have only 2 or 3°C of variation.
Again, one graph and one graph only blows the "made-made" BS right out of the water...
http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/tharriso/ast110/carbondioxide.gif
pine beetles have coexisted within their ecosystem for millenia and have not caused any major damage except for the last thirty years. In western canada they destroy millions of hectares of pine forest each year and are now spreading to eastern canada and the states. why now has a bug just up and gone totally locust on its environment??? because for the last thirty years the winter temperatures in that region haven't been sufficiently cold enough to cull the majority of the bugs. Now unmolested by killer cold temperatures they never die and multiply each year in the trillions to eat its way through the entire forest.
global warming Glitchez, you will drink this one, pucker up
Or because humans have stopped fucked witht he normal burn ccle of these forests and now these bugs not only don't get burned to a crisp but have an easy hop over huge swaths of pine forest with no burned out areas to traverse.
So let me get this straight..... We need more carbon dioxide in the air so that the arctic will melt and we can get more fossil fuel out of the ground so that we can put more carbon dioxide in the air. Talk about your circular bullshit arguments. I guess we are welcoming global warming....hmmmbullshit...... now. I was against global warming before I was for it.
Doc we have to pass the gas so we can find out what is in it.
I'm proud of myself with that one!
Guinness, chicken wings, blue cheese, and celery.
well I thought it was funny...I really am losing it.
taste the soup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA1gNwQftsM
Now that was funny. My daughter is beside me watching Disney wondering what the heck I'm laughing about.
Paraphrasing one of the old farts in Congress...priceless.
I do cocaine so I can work more.
So I can buy more cocaine.
So I can work more
So I can do more cocaine.
I for one welcome warming wholeheartedly.
Look at the historical record. Warm means health, wealth and good times for humans. Cold means death, poverty and disease.
Is it just me or does this just mean the low-hanging fruit has been picked and from here on out this shit is going to be difficult and expensive-as-hell to extract.
Otto the easiest way to keep the prices in check is if there were a lot less of us around.
They'll have to pry my 3mpg GMC Leviathan from my cold dead fingers.
This is funny:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/19/eu-syria-oil-jihadist-al-qaida
So the terrorists who actually attacked America on 9/11 weren't even able, after years of occupation, of taking control of the oil wells. What a sad, ackward irony, isn't it????
They said the same thing back in the 20's through the 40's. Then in the 70's they wanted to use nukes and carbon to prevent an ice age. These charlatans calling themselves "scientists" don't know what the climate will be in 20 or 30 years.
They also said Alaska was the "canary in the coal mine" and enunciated all sorts of dire predictions while it was warming there. Alaska has been cooling for a decade plus, with this past Winter/Spring the harshest on record, so what are they saying now? Nothing.
Yeah. That is right.
Same here. A stupid guy says I was going to die one day. He said that when I was two. But we Americans, are brainiacs so I registered.
So WTF? At five, I was waiting. At eight, I was waiting. At 12, I was waiting.
Still, nothing. Nothing today. Nothing, tomorrow. Nothing ever.
And what does that stupid guy say? Nothing. He is dead, by the way if you wanna know.
Signed: an American.
AnAnonymous asked:
He says preposterous idiocy blaming 'americans' for everything bad in prehistory, history, present time, and future.
A example of simply more made up shit....
Shell has already abandoned their artic attempt, and I've head nothing about others even trying at the moment. Shits too hard to extract and will cost way more to extract than they can get. I do have to laugh that we humans prize "economic advancement" (placing large amounts of money in very few hands) above keeping life on this rock sustainable.
There is more carbon in the methane hydrate resting on the bottom of the Arctic than in all the gas, oil, and coal on earth.
The Arctic is warming and the methane is rising in mile-wide bubbles.
What a joke. Look humanity: 200+ years of this industrial revolution and what do you get?
A junked Space Program
Commercial Flight below speed of sound
GMO Foods
SSRI's for your rightfully anxious kids
and the promise of polar region mineral resource exploitation once all that damn ice melts away!
Ah, decline.
Why wait for entropy when we can foster its acceleration with greed.
yes, it was much better in the "good ole days" when people died at 50 from disease, malnutrition and pestilence, and the streets were paved with parasite infested horse shit.
The world is a much cleaner place today than times past, all brought on by "greed".
You're an idiot.
Life Expactancy is decreasing in the US and levels of toxicity make your horseshit look like, well horseshit.
How's your tap water?
Cleaner world?
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/?ar_a=1
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0046793
I agree though, the planet is fine.
Look around at the obese slobs from eating TOO MUCH food. In generations past, you worked just to provide food to survive. Today kids sit around on their asses playing video games and texting while driving, induldge in stuffing their pie whole with garbage and wonder why they get diabetes and heart disease by age 18. Obesity comes from eating too much food and low inactivity.
It's about choices we make, not the technological advances.
Yes, China, that glorious free market Capitalist system whose slave masters care so very much for their "workers" well being, then send us their lead contaminated todays and laced dog food. I don't live in fucking China.
My tap water is fine. Maybe you should go over to Infowars and join in the circle jerk of paranoid freaks who think there's a bogeyman around every corner ready to kill them off.
Oh let me guess, Gas Land is an honest documentary, fracking is bad and wind farms actually produce a net increase in energy production while lowering energy costs.
+1 my friend. Hold your fire.
So adding bleach to hamburgers to make them look whiter and formaldehyde to soft drinks has no effect?
Does it?
Silly....don't you know global warming is a hoax? Just ask any Republican. You know, the guys who are paid by energy companies to tell us this. Just ignore the fact these very same every companies will be drilling where glaciers used to be. That would just be a little too confusing for you.
Yes, the global warming scam is the biggest hoax to have ever been hoisted on the public. In very simple terms, the "theory" isn't working as advertised. Which "theory" is that? Well, there are many, but the main tenet of AGW is the tropical troposhere should be warming at a significantly higher rate than the surface, aka the "missing hot spot". It ain't happening. Period, end of story.
Either the surface data is inflated due to upward "adjustments" by cooling the past and warming the present (that is true) and UHI etc., or the greenhouse amplification hypothesis is bullshit. Take your pick. Either way, it isn't warming as predicted and those pimping the AGW meme are wrong.
Here, look at the data for yourself. It is global data, and the tropical troposheric data clearly shows the lack of a "hot spot" in that region of the atmosphere. WFT does not allow for that data collection, however KNMI does. Knock yourself out. I don't know how to post pics on this website. http://climexp.knmi.nl/start.cgi?id=someone@somewhere
http://is.gd/PAIccL
While CO2 is rising, global temperatures have stalled. Oops, back to the drawing board.
http://is.gd/1dm99K
In the simplest of statistical terms, that translates to:
For RSS the warming is not significant for over 23 years.
For RSS: +0.127 +/-0.134 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For UAH the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For UAH: 0.146 +/- 0.170 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hadcrut3 the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.095 +/- 0.115 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hadcrut4 the warming is not significant for over 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.095 +/- 0.110 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS the warming is not significant for over 17 years.
For GISS: 0.111 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
Energy companies spend the vast majority of money for Greenie projects, not skeptics. Your "facts" are not facts at all.
There is one fact that is hard to dispute and that is co2 concentrations just hit 400ppm and continue to rise. The next question is does co2 trap more energy coming from the sun than the other gases that our atmosphere is composed of? I think that is easily proven in the lab. The key point here is that adding co2 is increasing the energy in our atomosphere and not so much what the average temp of the earth is. It's the energy in our atmosphere that creates our weather. I think I can see the proof of that myself in recent extreme weather events around the world. Another thing that you are missing is that while average temperatures may not reveal anything at the moment it clear that temperatures in the Artic are going up dramatically. This is releasing methane which is a more potent gas than co2 at trapping energy.
CO2 concentration has an inversly logarithmic affect on temperature, it takes more and more and more to increase the temperature by 1C so the looked for affects don't happen.
You ask "does co2 trap more energy coming from the sun than the other gases" in our atmosphere. Try looking at the effects on water vapor; beats CO2 hands down.
As for temperatures in the Arctic and the release of methane, I have to wonder: are there active volcanoes deep in the Arctic Ocean?
Does C02 condense out of the atmosphere like WV? Moreover, you clearly do not understand the difference between driving and feedback...
flak you lost your mojo..yrs ago we discussed this issue and well water vapor is like a cross to your vampire. carbon as you know gets recycled by plants, ocean microbes in the form of carbonates and so you can have it in your hand pick up a mullosk shell. Flak hope you get paid by the word for your lies. now use your famous skip to some other question about btu's and oil vs methane..idiot.
You seem to think that word salad can pass as a reasaonable discourse....
WV is a feedback not a driver, learn the difference
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
Study this graph for 15 secs and come back and tell me you still believe in "man-made" global warming
http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/tharriso/ast110/carbondioxide.gif
Bullish for CO2 futures!
Now repeat after me "correlation is not causation"....
thats great and all but what when we ve used all the ressources remaining up there too? Oh wait, humans are animals who eat, fuck, shit and die just like animals in any other animal species and that's about it. Just because we have more developed brains and are "smarter" -better at adapting to survive- than other animal species doesnt mean we re going to last longer than the dinosaurs tho. We re probably going to destroy ourselves because there s nothing else to do.
I wouldn't put to much into the benefits. Once the weight from the ice is gone the Earth will change its axis.
Remember the Mammoths