Category: Environment

Some time ago I created a website for the UK’s leading and first (I believe) hydroseeding company CDTS Ltd. Hydroseeding basically amounts to spraying a specially selected mixture of seeds suspended in a nutrient-rich solution on to any tract of brownfield land that you wish to convert into green fields with flowers and grasses. CDTS have used it to great effect all over the UK, specifically beautifying motorway cuttings, brownfield sites and the entrance/exit to the Channel Tunnel. Take a look at their site to find out more about the whole process of hydroseeding (sometimes called hydraseeding).

We all have so-called climate change targets to meet. So, you’d think we would be doing everything we can to cut carbon emissions, conserve energy etc.

It sometimes looks like we’re heading in the “right” direction – wind farms are sprouting up all over the place and forests are being harvested for biomass fuel rather than our digging away at ancient fossil hydrocarbons…but it doesn’t really add up really does it?

How much energy does it take to build one of those turbines and how long do they last? Ditto plant and managing supposedly “sustainable” forests for biomass?

Couple that announcements about new airports and runways that will multiply passenger capacity and one has to wonder…

The BBC today reports that Prince Charless sees climate change as the “greatest challenge to face man”…he’s such an expert, of course. Oh, and he’s worried about bird flu.

Researchers have detected high concentrations of the popular insecticide class known as pyrethroids in suburban stream sediments, raising concerns about its effects on aquatic life. Pyrethroids are the common active ingredient in most domestic insecticides and have been marketed for many years as a more environmentally benign alternative. However, little information has been gathered until now about their effects on wildlife. A study published in Environmental Science & Technology could help clarify their status.

It’s the news that should set the press a tremble, but fellow science journalist Natasha Loder has had to resort to posting an item about the refusal of Pakistan to grant leading Himalayan earthquake expert Roger Bilham an entry visa on her blog. At a time when one would expect intellectual activity in this field to be desperately needed, apparently scientists are not allowed into the country because this is not a time for “intellectual activities”, reports Loder.

Bilham and his colleagues at the University of Colorado have been forewarning of a major Himalayan earthquake for years, but the Kashmir earthquake released only a tenth of the potential energy stored in the region and Bilham further expects geological unrest.

His expertise could provide critical clues to when and where that pent up energy might be released…surely such intellectual activity is not just desirable but essential.

The floodwaters that engulfed New Orleans after Katrina turned out to be less toxic than scientists predicted. But, the same floodwaters pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain nevertheless carried with them high levels of various metals, including copper and zinc. Researchers at Louisiana State University writing in the October 11 issue of ES&T suggest this might pose a long-term risk to the area’s aquatic life.

According to my good friend chemist Martyn Poliakoff, the principles of green chemistry should be as easy as A,B,C. Or, more precisely, PRODUCTIVELY. Poliakoff, who is Prof of Chemistry at Nottingham University and famed for his pioneering work with supercritical fluids (SCFs), PRODUCTIVELY spells out –

Prevent wastes
Renewable materials
Omit derivitization steps
Degradable chemical products
Use safe synthetic methods
Catalytic reagents
Temperature, pressure ambient
In-process monitoring
Very few auxiliary substances
E-factor, maximize feed in product
Low toxicity of chemical products
Yes, it is safe!

Reminds me of a creative writing exercise from school, but if it gets the message across to other chemists it can’t be a bad thing.

Paul Thacker of the ACS wrote to tell me he has written a summary of the state of play in publishing when it comes to being skeptical about climate change science. Check out his piece on the journal “Energy & Environment”.

He suggests that climate-change skeptics rejected by mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals can always send their studies to Energy & Environment and his premise is supported by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, the journal�s editor. She says that the greater the agreement between climatologists, the more suspicious she becomes of their claims that human activity is the cause of global warming.

At least one citation from this journal mentioned in an EPA report was slipped in, says Thacker, and let to the subsequent deletion of the whole section on climate change from the report. To me that seems like almost an admission that there is no consensus.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and as such is an attractive candidate for becoming a pollution-free fuel of the future. However, almost all the hydrogen we use is produced using highly polluting fossil fuels. Worse, storing and transporting hydrogen is difficult, hazardous, and costly.

An international collaboration between the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, Institut de Science et de Genie des Materiaux et Procedes – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, and ScanArc Plasma Technologies AB in Sweden is hoping to develop a solar energy project with European Union funding to tackle the problems associated with hydrogen use by creating an easily storable intermediate energy source form from metal ore, such as zinc oxide.

By using concentrated sunlight, solar energy in other word, metal ore is heated to about 1,200 Celsius in a solar reactor over wood charcoal. this splits the ore, releases oxygen and creates zinc vapour, which is then condensed to a powder.

The final step involves reacting zinc powder with water to release hydrogen gas for use as fuel cell fuel. The by-product, zinc oxide, is simply recycled back to zinc in the solar plant.

In recent experiments, the 300-kilowatt installation produced 45 kilograms of zinc powder from zinc oxide in one hour, exceeding projected goals. Weizmann scientists are currently investigating metal ores other than zinc oxide, as well as additional materials that may be used for efficient conversion of sunlight into storable energy.

US researchers (Geological Survey and the City of Austin (Texas)) has discovered that runoff from the shiny coating, sealcoat, they apply to asphalt car parks is a previously unrecognized source of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The study is online today (June 22) in Environmental Science and Technology. Is this yet another justification for reducing car use, or environmental whinging? You decide.