Newspaper "Te Global Nature"

Europe is drowning Sea level rises

Animals on the move due to global warming

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nimals and plants adapting faster than anticipated to climatic change. According to a new study from the biology department of York University, published earlier this month, animals and plants appear to be adapting by migrating three times faster than anticipated to changing climatic conditions. Examples given include the Cetti’s warbler bird which has moved 150 kms North from Kent to the Humber, the Comma butterfly which has moved from central England to Edinburgh (220kms) and the Little Egret which has recently colonised Britain, a place originally too cold for this species.

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Fuel Ecoomy: Save Money on Gas

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he best way to burn less fuel is to buy a car that gets better gas mileage. But our tests with a Toyota Camry and other vehicles show there are ways to minimize what you spend at the pump with your current car.

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Top Environmentally Friendly Cars

T Scientific research indicates sea levels worldwide have been rising at a rate of 0.14 inches (3.5 millimeters) per year since the early 1990s. The trend, linked to global warming, puts thousands of coastal cities, like Venice, Italy, (seen here during a historic flood in 2008), and even whole islands at risk of being claimed by the ocean.

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ore samples, tide gauge readings, and, most recently, satellite measurements tell us that over the past century, the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters). However, the annual rate of rise over the past 20 years has been 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) a year, roughly twice the average speed of the preceding 80 years.

Over the past century, the burning of fossil fuels and other human and natural activities has released enormous amounts of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. These emissions have

caused the Earth’s surface temperature to rise, and the oceans absorb about 80 percent of this additional heat.

The rise in sea levels is linked to three primary factors, all induced by this ongoing global climate change: Thermal expansion: When water heats up, it expands. About half of the past century’s rise in sea level is attributable to warmer oceans simply occupying more space.

Melting of glaciers and polar ice caps: Large ice formations, like glaciers and the polar ice caps, naturally melt back a bit each summer. But in the winter, snows, made primarily from evaporat-

Top Ten Eco-Friendly Countries

ed seawater, are generally sufficient to balance out the melting.

Recently, though, persistently higher temperatures caused by global warming have led to greater-than-average summer melting as well as diminished snowfall due to later winters and earlier springs. This imbalance results in a significant net gain in runoff versus evaporation for the ocean, causing sea levels to rise.

Ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica: As with glaciers and the ice caps, increased heat is causing the massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica to melt at an accelerated pace. Scientists also believe

meltwater from above and seawater from below is seeping beneath Greenland’s and West Antarctica’s ice sheets, effectively lubricating ice streams and causing them to move more quickly into the sea.

Moreover, higher sea temperatures are causing the massive ice shelves that extend out from Antarctica to melt from below, weaken, and break off.

Consequences. When sea levels rise rapidly, as they have been doing, even a small increase can have devastating effects on coastal habitats.

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UN against gas project

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he Environmental Media Association (EMA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to harnessing the power of the entertainment industry and the media to educate the global public on environmental issues and motivate sustainable lifestyles.

Every year Environmental Media Association announces top ten Ecofriendly countries. While making the list they consider the greenhouse emission, nature protection, consumption and attitude criteria. You have perfect opportunity to see and explore top ten worlds greenest countries and cities. Maybe you are living among one of them?

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ccording to Survival International, the United Nations recently demanded an immediate halt to the expansion of a major gas project in the Peruvian Amazon, over concerns that it poses a grave risk to the lives of uncontacted indigenous communities living nearby in protected primary rainforest.

The UN’s Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) requested - in a letter to the Peruvian government - the ‘immediate suspension’ of plans to expand the existing Camisea gas project further into the Nahua-Nanti reserve, as it ‘threatens the physical and cultural survival of the indigenous peoples living there.’

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he new AEI study takes into account information from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and consumers related to fuel economy, air pollution and greenhouse gasses for vehicles from the 2006 model year.

Fuel economy accounts for about half the score.

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India pitches for extension of Kyoto Protocol

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ew Dehli: Ahead of the UN climate meet in Cancun, India on Wednesday warned that the global negotiations may collapse if there was no extension for Kyoto Protocol which sets binding greenhouse gas emission targets on rich nations from 2013 to 2018.

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Top Environmentally Friendly Cars

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he new AEI study takes into account information from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and consumers related to fuel economy, air pollution and greenhouse gasses for vehicles from the 2006 model year.

Fuel economy accounts for about half the score.

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Sunday, December 1, 2013

Europe is drowning. Sea level rises Phil Johnson phil.johnson@globalnature.com

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s seawater reaches farther inland, it can cause destructive erosion, flooding of wetlands, contamination of aquifers and agricultural soils, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants.

When large storms hit land, higher sea levels mean bigger, more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path.

In addition, hundreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely.

How High Will It Go? Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London and Los Angeles.

Why are global warming specialists watching the Arctic so closely?

The Arctic is global warming’s canary in the coal mine. It’s a highly sensitive region, and it’s being profoundly affected by the changing climate. Most scientists view what’s happening now in the Arctic as a harbinger of things to come.

Since 1979, the size of the summer polar ice cap has shrunk more than 20 percent. (Illustration from NASA) What kinds of changes are taking place in the Arctic now?

Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world.

Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing.

For example, the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3,000 years before it started cracking in 2000.

Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces.

The polar ice cap as a whole is shrinking. Images from NASA satellites show that the area of permanent ice cover is contracting at a rate of 9 percent each decade. If this trend continues, summers in the Arctic could become ice-free by the end of the century.

Since 1979, the size of the summer polar ice cap has shrunk more than 20 percent.

How does this dramatic ice melt affect the Arctic?

The melting of once-permanent ice is already affecting native people, wildlife and plants. When the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf splintered, the rare freshwater lake it enclosed, along with its unique ecosystem, drained into the ocean. Polar bears, whales, walrus and seals are changing their feeding and migration patterns, making it harder for native people to hunt them. And along Arctic coastlines, entire villages will be uprooted because they’re in danger of being swamped. The native people of the Arctic view global warming as a threat to their cultural identity and their very survival.

Will Arctic ice melt have any effects beyond the polar region?

The effects of global warming on the north are not limited to the Arctic -- higher temperatures are already affecting people, wildlife and landscapes across Alaska.

Yes - the contraction of the Arctic ice cap is accelerating global warming. Snow and ice usually form a protective, cooling layer over the Arctic. When that covering melts, the earth absorbs more sunlight and gets hotter. And the latest scientific data confirm the far-reaching effects of climbing global temperatures.

Rising temperatures are already affecting Alaska, where the spruce bark beetle is breeding faster in the warmer weather. These pests now sneak in an extra generation each year. From 1993 to 2003, they chewed up 3.4 million acres of Alaskan forest.

Melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets also contribute to rising sea levels, threatening low-lying

areas around the globe with beach erosion, coastal flooding, and contamination of freshwater supplies.

(Sea level is not affected when floating sea ice melts.)

At particular risk are island nations like the Maldives; over half of that nation’s populated islands lie less than 6 feet above sea level. Even major cities like Shanghai and Lagos would face similar problems, as they also lie just six feet above present water levels.

Rising seas would severely impact the United States as well. Scientists project as much as a 3-foot sealevel rise by 2100. According to a 2001 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study, this increase would inundate some 22,400 square miles of land along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, primarily in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

A warmer Arctic will also affect weather patterns and thus food production around the world. Wheat farming in Kansas, for example, would be profoundly affected by the loss of ice cover in the Arctic. According to a NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies computer model, Kansas would be 4 degrees

warmer in the winter without Arctic ice, which normally creates cold air masses that frequently slide southward into the United States. Warmer winters are bad news for wheat farmers, who need freezing temperatures to grow winter wheat. And in summer, warmer days would rob Kansas soil of 10 percent of its moisture, drying out valuable cropland.

Can we do anything to stop global warming?

Yes. When we burn fossil fuels -- oil, coal and gas -- to generate electricity and power our vehicles, we produce the heat-trapping gases that cause global warming. The more we burn, the faster churns the engine of global climate change. Thus the most important thing we can do is save energy.

And we can do it. Technologies exist today to make cars that run cleaner and burn less gas, generate electricity from wind and sun, modernize power plants, and build refrigerators, air conditioners and whole buildings that use less power. As individuals, each of us can take steps to save energy and fight global warming.

Animals on the move due to UN against global warming gas project While responses like this to global warming have been predicted, this study is the first to show that animal and plant species have moved furthest in the regions where the climate has warmed the most. It According to Survival International, the United appears that species are tending to move towards the poles in search of their more accustomed tempera- Nations recently demanded an immediate halt to the expansion of a major gas project in the Perutures as their traditional habitats warm up. vian Amazon, over concerns that it poses a grave er climates, with the fastest moves in places where heating was most Nicola Paterson risk to the lives of uncontacted indigenous commuintense. nicola.paterson@globalnature.com “These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away nities living nearby in protected primary rainforrofessor Chris Thomas claims the study shows that; “these from the equator at around 20 centimeters per hour, for every hour of est.

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changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the equator at around 20 centimetres per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year. This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century. “ The research team analysed data from a variety of studies and found over 2,000 examples of how animal and plant species have adapted by moving their habitat. Results showed that, on average, species have moved to higher ground at a rate of 12.2 metres per decade, and moved closer to the poles at the faster speed of 17.6 metres per decade.

Thomas goes on to say that for the first time the study showed, “that species have moved furthest in regions where the climate has warmed the most” and that this, “unambiguously links the changes in where species survive to climate warming over the last 40 years.”

Another recent study of a key glacier in Greenland showed that it is melting faster than previously expected. Greenland’s longest-observed glacier, Mittivakkat Glacier, made two consecutive record losses in 2010 and 2011. Observations indicate that the total 2011 mass budget loss was 2.45 metres. The 2011 value was also significantly above the 16 year average loss of 0.97 metres per year.

Animals are fleeing global warming much faster than they were less than a decade ago.

A study found about 2,000 species are moving north at a rate of more than 15 feet a day.

Researchers compiled past studies on species migration and combined them into a meta-analysis that showed a clear trend toward cool-

the day, for every day of the year,” said project leader Chris Thomas, biology professor at the University of York.

Animals, Plants Forced to Migrate to Keep Pace with Climate “This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century.”

The study, which appears in the journal Science, was described by York ecology professor and co-author Jane Hill as “a summary of the state of world knowledge about how the ranges of species are responding to climate change.

“Our analysis shows that rates of response to climate change are two or three times faster than previously realized,” she said.

The data came from studies of birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, spiders and plants in Europe, North America, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa’s Marion Island.

“This research shows that it is global warming that is causing species to move towards the poles and to higher elevations,” said lead author I-Ching Chen, now a researcher at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

NEWS: Coral Moves North to Beat the Heat “We have for the first time shown that the amount by which the distributions of species have changed is correlated with the amount the climate has changed in that region.”

Previous studies have suggested that some species are at risk for extinction due to their change in habitat, but this study did not delve into which species might be most in peril.

Instead, researchers said they hoped the analysis would give a more accurate picture of the changes going on across the planet.

“Realization of how fast species are moving because of climate change indicates that many species may indeed be heading rapidly towards extinction, where climatic conditions are deteriorating,” said Thomas.

“On the other hand, other species are moving to new areas where the climate has become suitable; so there will be some winners as well as many losers.”

Simon Rimes simon.rimes@globalnature.com

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he UN’s Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) requested - in a letter to the Peruvian government - the ‘immediate suspension’ of plans to expand the existing Camisea gas project further into the Nahua-Nanti reserve, as it ‘threatens the physical and cultural survival of the indigenous peoples living there.’

The call follows an appeal by Peru’s indigenous organisations AIDESEP, ORAU and COMARU who are also launching legal action against the government and companies involved - including Argentina’s Pluspetrol, US’s Hunt Oil and Spain’s Repsol. Camisea is already one of the largest gas projects in the Amazon and, in its early stages, was responsible for the death of many Nahua people who had been previously uncontacted but exposed to outsiders during the exploration stage.

Over half the population died

within a few weeks of contact, mainly from influenza.

The proposed gas project lies in the heart of the Nahua-Nanti Reserve that was created to protect the land and lives of uncontacted Indians. The next stage for the companies is to carry out seismic tests in the once protected but now threatened rainforest and to drill more than twenty exploratory wells.

Based on all previous experience, the work involved would have a devastating impact on the local inhabitants and their environment.

In violation of a 2003 Supreme Decree (passed as a condition of a loan by the Inter-American Development Bank, which prohibited any further expansion of the project), Peru’s Ministry of Energy approved part of the expansion of Camisea in April 2012.

According to reports, the Ministry is now set to approve the next phase of expansion, costing $480 million. The total project cost is in the region of $1.8 billion.

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Sunday, December 1, 2013

India pitches for extension of Kyoto Protocol Michael Kara michael.kara@globalnature.com

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e said: “Extension of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol for the time being is non-negotiable. There has to be second Kyoto Protocol. We can’t find any agreement on other issues if Kyoto is going to be abdicated at Cancun, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told reporters here.

Otherwise, “I think all countries have ... most developed and developing countries have shown considerable flexibility including India, China, Brazil and South Africa (belonging to BASIC group)”.

Ramesh was replying to a question how far developing countries were ready to be flexible to get a climate deal at the Cancun climate meet scheduled from November 29.

He was talking to reporters on the outcome of the two-day ministerial dialogue on “climate change: technology mechanism,” held here and the position India would take at the Cancun.

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and the overall climate talks so far has been moving on two tracks.

The first track is LCA under Bali Action Plan that requires parties to produce a legally-binding treaty before the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and the second track is extension of the Kyoto Protocol into the second commitment period from 2013 to 2018 where developed countries listed under Annex B will have to take binding cuts.

Making it amply clear that the Kyoto Protocol must continue to form the legal basis for emission reduction commitments beyond 2012, a position that India would take at the crucial UN talks, Ramesh favoured an extension of the second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

Based on the foundational principles of equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities under Kyoto Protocol, developed countries are bound to take emission cuts while developing nations have no such obligations.

However, Mexican Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, who was also present on the occasion, suggested there was a need to work on some other additional complimentary instruments to Kyoto Protocol.

What is Kioto protocol? The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty that sets binding obligations on industrialised countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The UNFCCC is an environmental treaty with the goal of preventing “dangerous” anthropogenic (i.e., human-induced) interference of the climate system. According to the UNFCC website, the Protocol “recognises that developed countries are principly responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a

Indian politics During the conference when the pitch for extention of Kyoto Protocol was decided.

result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, and places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”” There are 192 parties to the convention, including 191 states (all the UN members, except Andorra, Canada, South Sudan and the United States) and the European Union. The United States signed but did not ratify the Protocol.

“There has to be second Kyoto Protocol. We can’t find any agreement on other issues if Kyoto is going to be abdicated at Cancun”

Jairam Ramesh

The first commitment period applies to emissions between 2008-2012, and the second commitment period applies to emissions between 2013-2020. The protocol was amended in 2012 to accommodate the second commitment period, but this amendment has (as of January 2013) not entered into legal force.

The 37 parties with binding targets in the second commitment period are Australia, the European Union (and its 28 member states), Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have stated that they may withdraw from the Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment with second round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia have participated in Kyoto’s first-round but have not taken on new targets in the second commitment period. Other developed countries

without second-round targets are Canada (which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2012) and the United States (which has not ratified the Protocol).

International emissions trading allows developed countries to trade their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. They can trade emissions quotas among themselves, and can also receive credit for financing emissions reductions in developing countries.

Developed countries may use emissions trading until late 2014

or 2015 to meet their first-round targets.

Developing countries do not have binding targets under the Kyoto Protocol, but are still committed under the treaty to reduce their emissions. Actions taken by developed and developing countries to reduce emissions include support for renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, and reducing deforestation.Under the Protocol, emissions of developing countries are allowed to grow in accordance with their develop-

ment needs.

The treaty recognizes that developed countries have contributed the most to the anthropogenic build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (around 77% of emissions between 1750 and 2004), and that carbon dioxide emissions per person in developing countries (2.9 tonnes in 2010) are, on average, lower than emissions per person in developed countries (10.4 tonnes in 2010).

A number of developed countries have commented that the

Kyoto targets only apply to a small share of annual global emissions.

Countries with second-round Kyoto targets made up 13.4% of annual global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Many developing countries have emphasized the need for developed countries to have strong, binding emissions targets. At the global scale, existing policies appear to be too weak to prevent global warming exceeding 2 or 1.5 degrees Celsius, relative to the pre-industrial level.

Top 10 Eco-friendly countries Nicola Paterson and Simon Rimes nicola.paterson@globalnature.com simon.rimes@globalnature.com

1. Iceland Reykjavik, Iceland is not only the world’s greenest city – the entire country stands out as going above and beyond when it comes to sustainability and eco-friendliness. Iceland nabs the top spot for its low greenhouse gas emissions, protection of natural resources, and wellmanaged reforestation programs. The country gets energy for heat, hot water and electricity entirely from hydropower and geothermal resources — both of which are renewable and free of greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Switzerland Coming in close in second is Switzerland. According to Planet Green, Switzerland attained green superiority because of a tough stance on pollution. Switzerland also charges fees for their water and waste management services as well as environmental taxes which promote personal responsibility. It costs 1 euro for every bag of trash disposed of in Switzerland.

3. Costa Rica, Costa Rica holds its rainforests and high biodiversity as a top priority. Five percent of the world’s biodiversity is contained in this one country. Costa Rica is also big on eco-tourism, which supports its local people. Many of its hotels are environmentally friendly and blend into the environment with minimal pollution.

4. Sweden, Sweden has some of the purest air in Europe, because of the heavily regulated carbon emissions and fossil fuel output. One of its cities, Malmo runs entirely on biofuels, while many other cities also use many alternate energy resources. Per technorati: Swedes are serious about conserving, reusing, preserving and recycling. Every single Swede feels it’s their obligation to Planet Earth to be conscientious of the environment. There are different bags under the kitchen sink designated for various waste items. One is for food waste/coffee grinds, etc., another for paper items (such as something packaging food would come in) while another is for plastic items and yet another for glass bottles. Newspapers and magazines also get recycled.

5. Norway, Most of Norway’s energy comes from hydroelectric pow-

er. Ecological habits are integrated into everyday Norwegian life, education, as well as in the common rules of “living together”; recycling is taught from childhood, cycling is extremely widespread, and children learn about plants and animals from a very young age.

6. Mauritius Like Costa Rica, Mauritius prides itself in its biodiversity. This island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent has a booming eco-tourist based economy that thrives off its lush landscapes and beautiful beaches. Amongst many other green efforts, the Ministry of Environment has adopted an anti-littering campaign to reduce the amount of litter left by tourists.

7. France Climate change is one of the biggest issues for the French government and therefore, various steps have been taken in order to keep the country clean and green. One of which is the promotion of the country-wide mass public transportation system which reduces the amount of carbon emissions, keeping France’s air cleaner. Now gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, so CO2 emissions are relatively low.

8. Austria, Austria is very keen on maintaining its picturesque landscapes. The country has long been a fan of alternative energy. Austria has combined the use of hydropower with the use of wind, solar, and other renewable power sources, and has managed to green its power supply up to an impressive 80% use of renewable power sources. Their longtime commitment to ecological energy sources has made Austria a model for clean energy.

9. Cuba, Cuba is big on eco-tourism and forest preservation. Promoting awareness and respect for the local cultural, community and environment is part of their eco-tourism philosophy. Likewise, most Cubans have their own vegetable plots, saving the country from having large agricultural farming facilities.

10. Colombia, Colombia is very rich in biodiversity, and is home to about 10% of the world’s species. The country’s transportation system is highly fuel efficient with most vehicles using bio-diesels rather than oil. The government uses reforestation programs and sustainable forest development to guarantee income to locals, without having to exploits its resources.

This is the top 5 of cleanest and most Eco-friendly country flags. Most of the top ten is from Europe. Maybe you are living in one of the cleanest countries in the world? If not, try to make your country clean.

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Sunday, December 1, 2013

Ways, solutions and ideas to prevent global warming Climate change is a horrifying prospect which some of the world’s best designersand scientists have viewed as an opportunity to innovate. “The Global Nature” gives you the best ideas, ways and solutions we will be likely to see in the future.

John Gibson john.gibson@globalnature.com

Ideas

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ven if we miraculously halted all our greenhouse gas emissions today, human beings still face a warmer future. This is certainly not something to look forward to, but the silver lining is that it could at least create some things worth looking forward to.

We may develop technologies - such as geoengineering - to cool the planet. And we may also develop technology to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions, says Barry Brook a climate change scientist at the University of Adelaide. “We are going to need to adapt to changes in rainfall, temperature and sea level,” he says.

So just what kinds of inventions will help us cope once the world turns topsy turvey? Here are 10 future technologies to help us cope.

1. Solar-powered air conditioning

Australia is blisteringly hot in summer, and as temperatures rise so will the discomfort. Massive demand for air conditioning has already caused blackouts in California.

Will we be next as demand outstrips supply? “We can no longer simply bump up the fossil fuel-powered air conditioning because that’s going to dig us into a deeper environmental hole,” says Bianca Nogrady science writer and co-author of The Sixth Wave: How to Succeed in a Resource-Limited World. Mike Dennis, an engineer at the Australian National University, says the solution is to reduce demand with solar-powered units. The beauty of the idea is that they have the most cooling capacity when the Sun is at its peak and also provide hot water. The system uses thermal energy to compress air which sprays refrigerant out of a jet; as the refrigerant evaporates, it sucks up heat in the process.

2. Rotating power-generating skyscrapers

What about if your building itself could generate all the energy you required from the wind and the Sun? ItalianIsraeli architect David Fisher has designed a building that is already in construction in Dubai, where each prefabricated floor can rotate around a central stem independently of the other floors, meaning that the building’s shape constantly changes. In between each floor are wind turbines which Fisher claims will generate enough energy from one building to power 10 similarly sized buildings. He is designing similar towers for London, New York and Moscow.

3. Orbiting solar arrays

Solar power is the obvious solution to electricity generation in the world’s sunnier regions, but getting solar cells to produce power consistently and cheaply has been difficult. Californian firm Solaren has the audacious plan to launch an inflatable one-kilometre-diameter photovoltaic array into space, with the goal of creating a 200-megawatt solar farm. This would then beam the energy in the form of radio waves to a ground station near Fresno, California. Here the radiowaves would be turned to electricity and plugged into the grid. It sounds fictional, but Solaren have already signed a 15-year contract with Calfornian energy utility Pacific Gas and Electric, with the aim of turning the array on in 2016.

4. Drought- and heat-resistant crops

Heat won’t only to make us uncomfortable - it’ll push our crops out of their comfort zones too. Brook says that heat

and drought will “threaten the breadbaskets of the world,” such as Australia’s Murray Darling Basin and the US Midwest. We’ve used traditional selective breeding methods to get crops to adapt in the past, but as the climate rapidly changes, we need to accelerate that rate of adaptation.

Brook says genetic engineering is a great solution for taking traits from drought-tolerant species and introducing them into crops. Canadian company Performance Plants is already field testing drought-tolerant varieties of oilseed rape and maize, which it claims have a 40 per cent better yield when ‘water stressed’ than conventional varieties. A variety of drought-resistant wheat is being tested in Egypt which can get by on just one-eighth of the water of existing varieties.

live near the coast, is going to suffer too. We’ll need to factor in the threat in our plans for coastal development - and in some places may have to retreat from the sea. “In some cases houses, communities and even cities will need to be rethought,” says James Bradfield-Moody of the CSIRO and presenter of the ABC’s New Inventors. “Planning rules and building standards that worked in the past may no longer apply.” Facing problems with flooding and a concurrent housing shortage the Netherlands has developed amphibious houses. The first, created by the firm Dura Vermeer, were installed on the waterfront in the city of Maasbommel in 2007. They have hollow concrete cubes for buoyancy, are anchored to a vertical pile and can withstand up to a five metre rise in sea level.

5. Wave-powered water desalination

9. Floating sustainable cities

Desalination may be the only solution to irrigate crops in some parts of Australia as drought intensifies, but it’s an energy intensive process, criticised for generating significant carbon emissions. There’s an obvious solution though, says Brook. We can use the power of the sea itself to drive water ashore at high pressure, where it gets forced through semi-permeable membranes that block the passage of salt.

An Australian company has developed a system that uses buoys anchored to the seabed to pump water ashore with wave action. The same technology can also be used to generate electricity. “Sixty per cent of the world’s population live within 60 km of a coast,” says Brook. “Wave power is certainly among the most attractive of the range of possible renewable energy technologies. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most nascent in its development.”

6. Vertical farms

Another way to cut down on wasted water and resources for farming, is to produce crops more efficiently and closer to the end consumers. Dickson Despommier at Columbia University in New York City says that over 80 per cent of land that can be used for farming in the world already is, yet we’ll need to feed billions of extra mouths by 2050. The solution? Create farms in skyscrapers in our cities. Different crops would be grown on each level, using solar-powered lighting; water and waste would be recycled by natural means. Crops could get by with a fraction of the irrigation currently required, could be grown year round and would be protected from flood and drought. As an added benefit, farmland could be returned to nature, improving prospects for endangered species.

7. Artificial glaciers

A sizable chunk of the world’s population relies on the Himalayas to supply them with freshwater. Glaciers provide much water in other regions such as Peru and Chile too. As they melt with warming, water for agriculture will be in increasingly short supply. Chewang Norphel a retired civil engineer in the Ladakh region of north India has developed the ingenious solution of using artificial glaciers to provide water in summer. His system pipes water into shallow pools dammed with rocky embankments. In winter the pools freeze and as water is added, slowly form a sheet of ice. The water melts in the spring providing water to sow crops. The largest created so far is near a third of a kilometre long and 45 m wide.

8. Floating houses

Latest estimates from climate models estimate a rise in sea level of a metre or more by 2100. This presents a significant peril to low-lying nations such as Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Australia, where most of the population

If you like the idea of floating houses, what about an entire floating sustainable city? Major cities such as Sydney, New York and London are going to have to invest significantly in flood defences. Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has come up with a design for a floating city based on a giant lillypad, which he says would be a long-term solution to rising sea levels. These floating cities could house 50,000 climate refugees, would collect their own rainwater into a central lake and would generate power from renewable sources including wave, wind and solar power.

10. Arctic airships

Isolated communities in the Canadian Arctic would be virtually sealed off from the south if it wasn’t for the ice roads, and trucks that travel them in winter carrying freight. The Arctic is being hit harder than most places by climate change, and with warming, the brief ice road season will become even shorter, says University of Manitoba professor Barry Prentice. To keep the freight moving, Canadians have been looking to airships as a solution.

Skyhook International, based in Calgary, is working with aeroplane giant Boeing to produce huge airships that will be able to ship 36,000 metric tonnes of cargo over distances of around 300 km and keep the trade routes open.

Ways Repeatedly, you’ll hear or read the same suggestions as to what you can do to prevent global warming. Big media sources typically suggest very simplistic things like changing your light bulbs to compact fluorescents, buying a hybrid car, or unplugging appliances when they’re not in use.

But you want to make a real difference.

You are not content with the mainstream media’s advice, because you know that there are bigger things to be done, more dramatic actions to be taken to stop climate change from wrecking further havoc upon our precious ecosystems. Here I will share with you some of those bigger solutions that big media won’t tell you.

1.) Avoid high gas prices and carbon emissions

You will avoid rising prices at the gas pump and dramatically reduce your daily carbon emissions by selling your car. Buying a hybrid vehicle is one thing, but you’re still highly dependent upon fossil fuel for energy.

You will become healthier by riding a bicycle. Curb your addiction to cars, sell your vehicle, and become more mobile by using a bike, or public transportation such as the bus, subway, or train. There may even be carsharing programs in your city. There are numerous transportation alternatives to owning and driving a car. »»

Interesting facts • Every year in Ljor (Columbia) 13 300 mm of rain drops on the ground. This place is considered to be the most wet place in the planet.

• If you count rainy days per year then the most wet place in planet would be Bahia Felix, Chile. There are 325 rainy days per year.

• Since 1979, the size of the summer polar ice cap has shrunk more than 20 percent.

• In North hemisphere wind inside cyclone rotates clockwise and in South hemisphere everything is opposite.

• One tone of CO2 takes about 552 cubic meters of space.

• From 1979 weather temperature near Amundsen sea (Antarctica) rose about 2-2,5 degrees Celsius.

• 15% of all Oceans are considered as dead, because there are not enough oxygen for sea creature to live.

• The Amazon forest produce half the worlds oxygen supplies.

• Rain contains vitamin B12.

• Plants on the surface of the Earth have existed for around 400 million years.

• Around three quarters of the increase in CO2 levels from human activity over the last 20 years is from the burning of fossil fuels. The rest is made up largely of land use changes such as deforestation.

• Not only does it enable animals to live, oxygen can also turn a lobster’s colorless blood to blue when exposed to oxygen.

• More types of fish swim in Brazil’s Amazon River than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.

• If emissions of carbon dioxide were halted today, it would take more than a century for the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide to approach its pre-industrial level.

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World CO2 emissions from consumption of energy Million tones

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Ways, solutions and ideas to prevent global warming If your daily commute is more than a few miles away from your home, you may want to consider moving to a closer location to your job. Living car-free is a liberating experience and you will learn to prevent global warming on your way to work.

2.) Eat fresh, local foods for a healthy environment and you

There has been an influx of organic food in supermarkets over the past several years. But of equal importance to consider is where that food is coming from. For example, how much of the produce in your supermarket is being transported halfway around the world? Check the stickers on those apples and peaches and you’ll see ” Produce of Chile”, “Mexico”, or “China”. Also important to note: how much of that food is actually in season? The transportation of food is a major contributor to greenhouse gases.

You’ll massively reduce the carbon from your food if you follow the above advice. Plus, eating locally-grown, fresh foods is not only better for the planet, it’s healthier for you, too.

3.) Learn how to reduce your home’s carbon footprint

Do you realize that modern houses are built using synthetic products and other materials with high embodied energy? Sadly, this means that modern homes are huge contributors to global warming. For example, concrete is (amazingly) the second most consumed material on earth, right behind water, and it takes a huge amount of energy to produce it.

Not only that, the manufacturing process is highly polluting.

You can lower your energy bills with a home that is designed for maximum energy efficiency. One of the most simple things to consider learning about is passive solar design. Passive solar homes feature smart design considerations that can dramatically decrease the need for active energy heating and cooling systems. In other words, passive

solar homes stay cooler in the summer, and warmer in the winter with lesser need for air conditioning and heating. Greater energy efficiency equals a lesser carbon footprint.

Explode your conceptions of what a home can really be. You can take a workshop on how to build a straw bale home or a cob building, if you want to take it even further. Both of these natural building techniques stress the use of local and natural building materials, such as straw bales, sand, and clay. Natural building is an important movement towards a lower impact and environmentally sustainable lifestyle.

Easy ways for you to get low carbon food are: •Buying things that are actually in season.

•Buying locally-grown fruits and vegetables at farmers markets.

•Joining a CSA. 4.) Keep money in your pocket and carbon out of the air

Globalized, capitalist society thrives on rampant consumerism. And it is this system that is helping to degrade the environment and contribute to global climate change. But you can take a jab at the consumerism machine by reducing your consumption. For example, you can do this by buying used clothing, joining a co-op, and participating in events like Buy Nothing Day. There are endless means by which you can learn to live more simply, and in turn, more lightly upon the earth.

Live happily by simplifying your life. Your carbon footprint will be immediately reduced by consuming less. Big media would never tell

you to “consume less” since consumerism is the very thing keeping our broken economy running. (About 70% of the US GDP is attributed to consumer spending, after all.)

You can defy big media, shun consumerism, and in turn, help prevent global climate change and promote a simpler, happier lifestyle. Try it.

5.) Live your values happily with friends

It can be hard to fight global warming if you are not surrounded by people who share your values and support your choices. However, you can easily change this by moving to an ecovillage. For example, I’ve been living off the grid for over a year in a community striving to fight ecological problems like global warming.

Learn about this amazing place and you’ll be amazed. Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage’s mission represents a holistic attempt to tackle ecological and cultural change in a profound way.

You can make a huge difference by supporting ecovillages as they create change, both ecological and cultural, on a grander scale than seen anywhere else in society. There are many ecovillages scattered all over the globe, each with its own organization and mission, but all dedicated to living more lightly upon the earth through various means.

You can have a happier and simpler lifestyle if you live in community. Many ecovillages have visitor programs that allow you to see how wonderful and fulfilling life can when you live more simply and cooperatively.

You have the power to prevent global warming through personal choice and action. If you want to take dramatic action, these are just a few of the things you can do. There are opportunities for change at every corner of daily life. Big problems require big change. Global warming is one such problem, and the change required to successfully deter future catastrophe demand our immediate attention.

It’s critical that you act right now to share the above information with the world. Future generations and the world’s poor cannot afford for you to wait for the media to educate people about the actions that really make a difference. »»

Arctic 30 arrive in Saint Petersburg John Gibson john.gibson@globalnature.com

Twenty-eight Greenpeace activists and two journalists detained by Russia during an Arctic protest nearly two months ago arrived in Saint Petersburg in a train prison wagon on Tuesday after a journey of more than 800 miles (1,200km) from the northern city of Murmansk.

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he wagon was detached from the train and moved about half a mile away from the station before the detainees, surrounded by police, were transferred to buses, Greenpeace International said.

It was unclear whether the group would be held in one detention centre in the city or held at different sites. It also remained to be seen whether conditions are different to those in which they were held in Murmansk, where the five women were held in single cells and the men were split up but shared cells with Russian speakers. A team of lawyers was on standby in Saint Petersburg to represent them, said Greenpeace.

The Arctic 30 were captured in September after armed Russian border guards stormed their ship during a protest in which campaigners tried to scale an Arctic drilling platform.

On Monday some families of six Britons in the group expressed concerns over their welfare. Sue Turner, mother of Iain Rogers, second engineer on the Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise ship, was particularly worried that the group would be split up and members could “disappear”.

Greenpeace said it was routine after a prison transfer in Russia for detainees to be quarantined for infectious diseases. This may be a relatively short period, but lawyers will not have access to the detainees during this period.

Ben Ayliffe of Greenpeace said: “This is a new chapter in the story of the Arctic 30, but it’s still the same story. They are innocent men and women in jail on trumped up charges, threatened with long-term prison sentences for a crime they didn’t commit.

“In an age of cynicism and political apathy in many countries, the activists did something about an issue they care passionately about … They protested peacefully, driven by their convictions, and for that they are being unjustly punished. They should be released immediately.”

Greenpeace says legal moves should start next week if Russian authorities wish to extend the group’s detention. David Cameron last week told Vladimir Putin he considers the charges of “hooliganism” excessive while William Hague, the British foreign secretary, has also raised the detentions with his opposite number, Sergei Lavrov.

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Solutions: Desperate times call for desperate measures. While the politicians fiddle in Copenhagen, many believe the only way to solve the global warming problem is to take radical, creative new steps, deploying new technologies to tweak the temperature.

Over the past few years scientists have offered up some extreme measures — from carbon-capturing rocks to space nets — that could solve the crisis. Some focus on reducing or capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which trap the heat on Earth, while other solutions are aimed at cooling the planet by preventing some of the sun’s rays from hitting its surface.

We’ve rounded up eight of the most innovative — or at least the strangest — ideas that are currently getting attention.

1. Spray It Away

The Idea: Remember how we all had to stop spraying ozone-depleting aerosols into the atmosphere? Maybe it’s time to re-think that.

A proposal known as stratospheric aerosol insertion suggests that chemicals — sulfur dioxide, in this case — sprayed into the Earth’s nearest atmospheric levels could bind with other chemicals to reflect sunlight from the Earth. Helium balloons or high-flying planes could disperse the sulfur dioxide. The gas would oxidize and reflect back some (but not all) of the sunlight that would otherwise hit the planet’s surface. Less sunlight hitting the surface means a cooler earth.

The sulfur would be cheap; it’s a common industrial pollutant. According to the Council on Foreign Relations , one kilogram of the stuff could offset the effect of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of carbon dioxide.

Potential Problems: It could end up working too well, causing catastrophic weather changes in certain areas (such as sudden droughts).

One scientist proposed trying it over the Arctic first, just in case things got a little too chilly.

The concept also involves using one pollutant to offset another — very tricky business indeed, especially when it’s explained that stratospheric aerosol insertion creates sulfuric acid and would contribute to ozone depletion — the problem we licked a few years ago by banning CFCs.

2. Use Sunscreen

The Idea: We use sunscreen every day (or we should). Why not use the same principal on the Earth?

Like something out of ‘Star Trek,’ the concept is to build a giant screen made of criss-crossing aluminum strands and put it into space. The screen would act like a filter, preventing some infrared radiation from reaching the planet.

As wacky as the idea sounds, it’s been promoted by scientists like Lowell Wood (one of the original Reagan-era Star Wars supporters) and “Whole Earth Catalog “ founder Stewart Brand. Proponents claim the screen would appear as a tiny spot on the sun as viewed from the earth and that it wouldn’t affect plant growth, which of course consumes CO2 themselves.

Potential Problems: A sunscreen is a last ditch effort. Building such a screen — an estimated 600,000 square miles in size — launching it into space and maneuvering it into a precise, gravity-neutral location between the sun and Earth may be beyond our current means. After all, we don’t even have a working Space Shuttle replacement yet.

the carbon dioxide to be stored in a harmless location. These fake trees wouldn’t need direct sunlight, so they could be installed anywhere (not just in some forsaken place in the Midwest or desert). With the right design, fake trees could also work 1,000 times faster than the real thing.

Potential Problems: Fake trees wouldn’t look like real trees (although they could be hidden indoors). Then there’s that nagging problem of what to do with captured carbon dioxide. Several proposals to use it to enhance vegetable production or in jet fuel look too costly. The most difficult problem, however, is the same one that bedevils the idea of wind-scrubbing filters: it takes too much energy to separate the carbon from the filtering chemicals.

5. Needs More Salt

The Idea: Clouds protect the earth from overheating, so more clouds would be good, right?

The concept is reasonably sound. Clouds do help protect the Earth, so some scientists have proposed creating more clouds by blowing salt into the air. That would increase the chances of water vapor clinging to particles (the salt) and forming clouds. Salted clouds are also whiter and therefore would reflect more sunlight back into space, cooling the planet.

But how to get salt into the air? Some suggest computer-guided sailboats to create giant plumes of sea spray. The boats would use little energy, because they would be largely powered by the wind. And the idea wouldn’t expose us to much climate risk: If extra clouds started creating hurricanes and tropical storms, for example, the process could be shut down simply by stopping the boats.

Potential Problems: No one knows how many boats it would take or if the idea would even work — cloud seeding has been notoriously unpredictable, after all. Plus the salt crystals from the evaporating sea water might be too small to form clouds.

6. Needs More Iron

The Idea: It has been demonstrated on a small scale that iron powder dumped into the ocean promotes the rapid growth of plankton. Plankton eats CO2, so the more the better.

Iron fertilization was tried in the Southern Ocean near the Antarctic, and based on those results it’s estimated that we could at the very least offset 1,000 pounds of carbon emissions for as little as 10 cents. The low cost is what makes this idea so attractive.

Potential Problems: There just one problem, but it’s a biggie: Large plankton blooms can destroy the underwater ecosystem, killing off other species as it consumes other nutrients. Without natural resources from the sea, we’d really be in a pickle.

7. Get Stoned

The idea: Limestone (aka calcium carbonate) actually contains trapped carbon dioxide. So why not turn carbon dioxide into stone?

It takes nature thousands of years to harden chemicals into stones, but scientists think they could do it in a very short time using a process called mineral carbonation. In this approach, carbon dioxide is compressed, heated and then mixed with a mineral such as serpentine or olivine and a chemical catalyst to form limestone-like rock. The end product would be harmless and might even be used as a building material.

Potential Problems: We would have to mine significant amounts of minerals to mix with the carbon dioxide for mineral carbonation to work, and mining has an environmental impact of its own. And heating the mixture to the high temperatures required would take — you guessed it — more CO2-producing energy. Ultimately, the cost may be prohibitive: an estimated $70 per 1 ton of carbon dioxide.

8. Push the CO2 Underground

The Idea: We have lots of cheap coal, but it’s the biggest polluter of CO2. Why not filter it out and then pump it underground to store it?

Better still, why not pump it into places where we’re trying to push oil out of the ground?

This is the principal concept behind the so-called clean coal movement, and at least one such program is still being studied: the Weyburn Project in Saskatchewan, Canada. Researchers there have already shoved millions of tons of CO2 underground and say that if similar projects were initiated around the world, underground reservoirs could trap 200,000 gigatons of CO2; worldwide annual emissions are only 28 gigatons.

Potential Problems: Governments, researchers, and major companies around the world are racing to try to make such a system work.

But so far the approach has proven too costly. The gas has to be captured, compressed, and then transported safely to the site of injection.

And what if it escapes years from now? Trapped in cellars, carbon dioxide could be more lethal than radon.

3. Scrub Like the Wind

The Idea: How about developing a giant air filter, like the HEPA filters used in homes and offices, to take the carbon dioxide out of the air?

The concept works, in theory. Like a huge radiator filled with chemicals instead of water, such filters could catch CO2 from the air and bind it with chemicals in the filter. Later, the carbon dioxide would be stripped from the chemicals and stored, hopefully nearby to avoid issues of transporting the compressed carbon.

Potential Problems: Testing the theory on a large scale is difficult. No one is sure how many filters you would need to make a significant impact (how many thousands of acres of land would need to covered with giant filters?). And there’s the issue of separating the CO2 from the capturing chemicals: This would take a significant amount of energy, which in turn produces more CO2.

4. Plant Fake Trees

The Idea: Trees are superb at absorbing carbon dioxide, but what if we could build a better tree, at least one that could capture even more carbon dioxide?

A synthetic tree with plastic leaves could attract CO2 (much like smokestack filters or those wind scrubbers), then trap and compress

The Lilypad, by Vincent Callebaut, is a concept for a completely self-sufficient floating city intended to provide shelter for future climate change refugees. The intent of the concept itself is laudable, but it is Callebaut’s phenomenal design that has captured our imagination.

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Fuel Economy: Save Money on Gas The best way to burn less fuel is to buy a car that gets better gas mileage. But our tests with a Toyota Camry and other vehicles show there are ways to minimize what you spend at the pump with your current car.

Ben Keeman

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ben.keeman@globalnature.com

rive at a moderate speed. This is the biggest factor. You may have to be a little patient, but driving at 55 mph instead of 65 or 75 will save you money. When we increased the Camry’s highway cruising speed from 55 mph to 65, the car’s fuel economy dropped from 40 mpg to 35. Speeding up to 75 mph cost the car another 5 mpg. One reason is that aerodynamic drag increases exponentially the faster you drive; it simply takes more fuel to power the car

through the air.

Drive smoothly. Avoid hard acceleration and braking whenever possible. In our tests, frequent bursts of acceleration and braking reduced the Camry’s mileage by 2 to 3 mpg. Once up to speed on the highway, maintain a steady pace in top gear. Smooth acceleration, cornering, and braking also extend the life of the engine, transmission, brakes, and tires.

Reduce unnecessary drag. At highway speeds, more than 50 percent of engine power goes to overcoming aerodynamic drag. So don’t carry things on top of your vehicle when you don’t have to. Installing a large Thule Cascade 1700 car-top carrier on our Camry dropped its gas mileage from 35 mpg to

29 at 65 mph. Even driving with empty racks on the car reduces its fuel economy.

Don’t use premium fuel if you don’t have to. If your car specifies regular fuel, don’t buy premium under the mistaken belief that your engine will run better.

The only difference you’ll see is about 20 cents more per gallon. Most cars are designed to run just fine on regular gasoline. Even many cars for which premium is recommended will run well on regular. We have found that the differences are imperceptible during normal driving. Check your owner’s manual to find out if your engine really requires premium or if you can run on other grades.

Minimize driving with a cold engine. Engines run

most efficiently when they’re warm. In our city-driving tests, making multiple short trips and starting the engine from cold each time reduced fuel economy by almost 4 mpg. Engines also produce more pollution and wear faster when they’re cold. When possible, combine several short trips into one so that the engine stays warm.

Keep tires properly inflated. The Camry experienced a 1.3 mpg loss in highway fuel economy when the tires were underinflated by 10 psi. More important, underinflated tires compromise handling and braking, and wear faster. And they run much hotter, which can lead to tire failure. Check the pressure of your vehicle’s tires at least once a month with a tire gauge. The owner’s manual explains how to do it.

Buy tires with lower rolling resistance. A tire’s rolling resistance can add or detract another 1 or 2 mpg.

In our tire ratings, look for high-rated tires with low rolling resistance. They generally won’t cost more, and replacing a worn tire could save you more than $100 a year in fuel.

Avoid idling for long periods. Think of it this way: When you’re idling, your car is getting zero miles per gallon. When we let a Buick Lucerne, with a V8, idle for 10 minutes while warming up, it burned about an eighth of a gallon of gas. A smaller engine would probably burn less, but idling still adds up over time. As a rule, turn off your engine if you expect to sit for more than about 30 seconds. An engine warms up faster as it’s driven anyway.

MYTH BUSTERS

The brand new Dodge Ram 1500 Sport whitch saves a lot of money althought it has very powerful engine inside.

Morning fill-ups. A common tip is to buy gasoline in the morning, when the air is cool, rather than in the heat of the day. The theory is that the cooler gasoline will be denser, so you will get more for your money. But the temperature of the gasoline coming out of the fuel nozzle changes very little, if at all, during any 24-hour stretch. Any extra gas you get will be negligible.

Air conditioning vs. opening windows. Some people advise you not to run the air conditioner because it puts more of a load on the engine, which can decrease fuel economy. But others say that opening the windows at highway speeds can affect gas mileage even more by disrupting the vehicle’s aerodynamics.

Our tests show that neither makes enough of a difference to worry about.

A dirty air filter. Our tests show that driving with a dirty air filter no longer has any impact on fuel economy, as it did with older engines. That’s because modern engines use computers to precisely control the air/fuel ratio, depending on the amount of air coming in through the filter. Reducing airflow causes the engine to automatically reduce the amount of fuel being used. Fuel economy didn’t change, but the Camry accelerated much more slowly with a dirty filter.

Hyundai ramps up hydrogen-powered cars for Europe Copenhagen, Denmark, is trying to go “carbon-neutral” by 2025, and it’s taken the first step with a delivery of 15 Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cells for its municipal fleet. Korean automaker expects to sell 1,000 fuel-cell crossovers by 2015.

Arthur Doyle arthur.doyle@globalnature.com

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ow does this help Copenhagen? Well, the car – a European version of the Tucson – is powered exclusively by hydrogen, and the only thing coming out of the tailpipe is water vapor – which Hyundai morbidly pointed out in a commercial mocking suicide. More appropriately, the delivery by Hyundai Motors Europe coincided with the opening of the first hydrogen filling station in Denmark. During the handover, Byung Kwon Rhim, president of Hyundai Motor Europe, said that hydrogen would be “the fuel of the future for Europe.” The company has made ix35s available to European Union policy-makers in Brussels through a program called the EU Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking

and wooed 100 European business reps at a special event in Berlin with test drives and product demonstrations. In May, Hyundai signed up with the U.S. Energy Department’s H2USA program, which will combine government and industry forces to find ways to promote hydrogen-powered technology.

As of March, only 208 hydrogen refueling stations were operating worldwide, about 56 of them in the U.S. You won’t win any speed contests with this car, plain and simple. But it does offer performance comparable to most current compact hybrids and EVs, and it bests many all-electric cars in range.

Plus, filling the tanks to maximum capacity takes just a few minutes, so no lengthy charging is required.

Of course, you need a reliable spread of public hydrogen filling stations, and right now those are few and far between.

Hyundai is hoping the ix35 Fuel Cell will bring awareness for a pan-European hydrogen-refueling network. As of March, only 208 hydrogen refueling stations were operating worldwide, about 56 of them in the U.S. Even with those scant numbers, one enterprising group in a pair of ix35 Fuel Cells was able to drive 1,404 miles from Oslo, Norway, to Monaco using the existing hydrogen refueling network.

Hyundai said it plans to build 1,000 cars by 2015.

Other automakers have made similar, albeit limited, progress on fuel-cell vehicles.

In January, Ford, Daimler and Renault-Nissan promised to sell a hydrogen-powered car by 2017 in a joint agreement. BMW and

Toyota also are collaborating on fuel-cell technology and plan to release a jointly developed car by 2020, although Toyota will release its own car in 2015.

Honda has leased roughly 200 hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity models in Southern California, where the majority of the hydrogen refueling stations in the U.S. are located. The FCX Clarity is the first production hydrogenpowered car to be sold.

Mercedes-Benz, owned by Daimler, is leasing a few dozen hydrogen models in California that are based on the B-Class subcompact sold in Europe. Renault has tested a hydrogen-powered crossover, the Scenic ZEV H2, since 2008. Ford has also run a fleet of 30 hydrogen-powered Focus sedans since 2005.

Later this year, Audi will open a renewable gas plant that will produce natural gas and hydrogen,

making it the first automaker to build and run its own facility for such fuels.

But it’s still a long shot. The socalled “Hydrogen Highway,” part of which would connect Maine to Miami with hydrogen refueling stations, is still a concept, and with tax credits set to expire, the incentive to produce hydrogen – a complex and sometimes wasteful process – may float into the wind.

Let’s take a quick look at the stats on the Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell: • 100-kilowatt (136 horsepower) electric motor; • Top speed of 99 mph; • Two hydrogen storage tanks, located between the vehicle’s rear axle, with a total capacity of 12 pounds; • Range of 394 miles;

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Hydrogen: Fuel or Bomb?

Top Environmentally Friendly Cars

There is a lot of debate over what fuel will propel our automobiles into the next century and beyond. Even though hydrogen is a front-runner in this race, many experts are still worried that it will fall short of expectations.

The new AEI study takes into account information from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and consumers related to fuel economy, air pollution and greenhouse gasses for vehicles from the 2006 model year. Fuel economy accounts for about half the score.

Adrian Jacson adrian.jacson@globalnature.com

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n 2003 President George W. Bush announced a billiondollar plan to help usher in a new era of zero-emission, fossilfuel-free driving. One of the more popular solutions to the looming crises of rising oil prices and climate change at that time was the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle. These cars would be run on compressed hydrogen gas, which would be converted by a series of onboard fuel cells into electricity to power electric motors. Instead of releasing harmful greenhouse gases into the air, the byproduct of this process is water (hot water, to be specific), an almost comical puff of steam.

As soon as the money was available, the U.S. Department of Energy began doling out grants to universities, federal funds flowed into the research and development labs at the Detroit Three, and energy firms lined up for millions in subsidies to create newer, cleaner methods of squeezing hydrogen from coal and other existing energy sources.

Five years later, at the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show, only one new hydrogen vehicle was unveiled — Honda’s FC sport car concept, running on the same fuel-cell stack used by the company’s existing FCX Clarity sedan. Meanwhile, a slew of new all-electric and hybrid-electric cars were on display, including an electric MINI Cooper and hybrid versions of previous models, such as the Ford Fusion. The electric vehicle, along with its less-ambitious hybrid electric-gas-powered cousin, has all but stolen hydrogen’s thunder. So what happened?

Lack of Infrastructure Just last year, the Department of Energy began funding the development of plug-in hybrids. And despite billions in federal dollars, the only hydrogen car produced in significant numbers by a U.S. automaker is the Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell, which was distributed earlier this year to approximately 100 drivers in California, New York City and Washington, D.C., as part of a test program.

The only commercially available new fuel-cell car on the road today is Honda’s FCX Clarity, which is being leased to around 200 customers in Southern California.

The catch: Applicants must live near one of three 24-hour hydrogen filling stations and be willing to pay for a 3-year, $600-permonth lease — roughly the same cost as leasing a new Porsche Cayman sports car or MercedesBenz E350 luxury sedan. The bigger catch: There are just 65 hydrogen refueling stations across the country, and little hope of major expansion in the near future.

Compared with the more ambiguous goal of upgrading the country’s electric grids to handle more hybrids or electric vehicles, the prospect of building a comprehensive network of hydrogen fueling pumps is daunting, to say the least. Hydrogen pipelines exist, but they tend to be relatively short, connecting oil refineries (the primary customer for hydrogen) with production plants that are either on-site or locat-

ed nearby. And since the hydrogen is transported as compressed gas, existing oil and gas lines would have to be replaced, rather than retrofitted. In the short term, hydrogen could be shipped in trucks, which would raise the overall cost and carbon impact of the fuel.

Another hurdle — if the energy used to process the hydrogen comes from coal-fired plants or other emissions-producing sources, how do you build a hydrogen economy without an increase in airborne pollutants?

After all, the clean-coal technology that many had hoped would clear the way for a hydrogenpowered future is still little more than a campaign promise (both John McCain and Barack Obama pledged to fund carbon-capture research).

Lack of Raw Materials

More bad news for hydrogen: the high price and potential scarcity of platinum, which is used as a catalyst in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells.

There are many different kinds of fuel cells, but with their relatively low operating temperatures (roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit), PEM cells are the most compatible with vehicles.

Honda’s Clarity, arguably the most efficient hydrogen vehicle on the road, uses a vertical stack of PEM cells. Hydrogen and oxygen flow into the cells, where a catalyst helps convert hydrogen ions into electricity. Currently, the best catalyst appears to be a thin coating of platinum. Honda President Takeo Fukui predicted that hydrogen cars could become commercially viable by 2018, if priced similarly to a new luxury car. For the technology to compete on a wider scale, researchers will have to find a new catalyst.

“There will be a platinum alternative,” says Fritz Prinz, chairman of Stanford University’s mechanical engineering department.

“There are metal alternatives, some of which we’re in the process of patenting now, and nonmetal alternatives. I would expect to see progress over the next five to 10 years.” Another approach already showing results is platinum alloys, which incorporate less of the rare metal.

Can Hydrogen Become a Reality?

Even so, Prinz believes that, despite all of their inherent challenges, hydrogen cars could become a reality due to raw necessity. “Hydrogen depends ultimately on what the larger energy infrastructure looks like. If it’s solar, then storage will be big,” Prinz says. Solar panels, like wind turbines, are intermittent power sources — their output spikes and plunges depending on the time of day and changing weather conditions.

Without an efficient way to store that energy, and then release it in measured, steady increments to meet the shifting hourly requirements of electric grids, solar-power providers risk either throwing away excess energy during low demand or coming up empty during peak hours.

While some experts believe that battery technology could even-

tually provide enough efficiency to store and release solar power, Prinz sees hydrogen as a more practical solution. “Solar can only become effective and feasible once you have a parallel of energy storage.” The energy produced by photovoltaic panels could be used to extract hydrogen from another renewable resource: water. Strategic placement of solar farms could limit the length and number of hydrogen pipelines.

This is a relationship that Honda is already exploring, with a demonstration home in Torrance, Calif., that uses rooftop solar panels to generate hydrogen, with a refueling station located in the garage.

Whether it’s simply a marriage of convenience, or symbolic of the kind of cooperation many believe is necessary to reduce carbon emissions and dependence on oil, hydrogen’s best hope for survival might be as the indispensable sidekick of another power source that’s been stymied by the need for a long-term, large-scale infrastructure commitment. Still, the most optimistic estimates have hydrogen as a viable mainstream choice in a decade. Honda has no immediate plans to expand its pool of Clarity customers, and the FC Sport car it unveiled at the L.A. Auto Show is just a concept.

Unless you’re one of a few hundred early adopters, the hydrogen car is still miles down the road.

Adrian Jacson adrian.jacson@globalnature.com

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f the 30 vehicles that made the list, eight feature gas-electric hybrid powertrains. The hybrids include the Ford Escape Hybrid, Lexus RX 400h, Mercury Mariner Hybrid and Toyota Highlander Hybrid. These four were the only SUVs to make the cut. No pickup trucks or minivans were considered environmentally friendly.

According to the study, there is high interest in hybrids and vehicles that run on alternative fuels such as diesel or E85.

Only two vehicles that J.D. Power considers luxury models made the list—the Lexus RX 400h and Acura RSX. Among automakers, Ford, Honda and Toyota had the most vehicles on the list, with six vehicles each from their various nameplates. General Motors and Volkswagen placed three vehicles apiece. The sole German automaker with vehicles on the AEI list, Volkswagen had the Golf, Jetta and New Beetle among the top 30. However, the diesel versions

of these models did not make the cut.

“High gas prices, coupled with consumers becoming more familiar with alternative powertrain technology, are definitely increasing consumer interest in hybrids and flexible fuels,” said Mike Marshall, director of automotive emerging technologies at J.D. Power and Associates. “However, the additional price premiums associated with hybrid vehicles, which can run from $3,000 to $10,000 more than a comparable non-hybrid vehicle, remain the biggest concern among consumers considering a hybrid. The AEI highlights several non-hybrid models available that help consumers reduce fuel use and emissions.”

According to the study, there is high interest in hybrids and vehicles that run on alternative fuels such as diesel or E85. In fact, J.D. Power reports that less than 25 percent of respondents will only consider a gasoline-powered car for their next purchase.

But there are some misconceptions. Consumers purchasing hybrid vehicles expected a fuel-economy improvement by 28 mpg compared to a similar powered gas-only vehicle. Reality, however, showed hybrid buyers only gaining an improvement of 9

mpg. Diesel buyers were similarly disappointed, reporting a 12 mpg improvement when an improvement of 21 mpg was expected.

“One of the biggest challenges for alternative powertrains is that consumers often have unrealistic expectations for the fuelsaving abilities of these vehicles,” Marshall said. “And particularly with hybrids, actual fuel performance often doesn’t live up to the vehicle’s EPA estimate. There is a real need to educate consumers about the technology and its benefits. Managing consumer expectations and lowering the cost premium will be instrumental in accelerating acceptance.”

The AEI is based on data from 4,000 consumers who plan to purchase a vehicle within the next two years.

Listed in alphabetical order, the top 30 environmentally friendly vehicles according to the J.D. Power study are:

• Acura RSX • Chevrolet Aveo • Chevrolet Cobalt • Ford Escape Hybrid • Ford Focus • Ford Focus Wagon • Honda Accord • Honda Accord Hybrid • Honda Civic • Honda Civic Hybrid • Honda Insight • Hyundai Accent • Hyundai Elantra • Kia Rio • Kia Spectra • Lexus RX400h • Mazda Mazda3 • Mazda MX-5 Miata • Mercury Mariner Hybrid • Nissan Sentra • Saturn Ion • Scion xA • Suzuki Reno • Toyota Camry • Toyota Corolla • Toyota Highlander Hybrid • Toyota Prius • Volkswagen Golf • Volkswagen Jetta • Volkswagen New Beetle

Joey Stevens joey.stevens@globalnature.com

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