Ordinary Cars Go Green and Reduce Carbon Footprint

Product Advancements Let Drivers Go Green Without a New Car.

With gas prices soaring, environmental concerns and technological advancements in the auto and energy industry, ecological cars (eco cars) are slowly entering the mainstream market. Eco cars are vehicles that do not solely rely on fossil fuels for energy.

The most popularly used energy source for eco cars is electricity. Fuel cells (usually lithium-ion battery cells) power an electric engine that drives the car. Hybrid engines use both a gasoline engine and a battery operated one that alternates between each other depending on the most optimal choice. There are also pure electric vehicles but are limited in terms of range and use.

These type of vehicles have come into focus because of the movement to reduce the global carbon footprint. Carbon footprint can be simplified as the greenhouse gas emissions in an area, by an event, product, or person(s). The largest source of emissions come from driving fossil fueled vehicles (gasoline use). Reducing the carbon footprint from driving can be done primarily by driving less, or at the moment, developing more environment-friendly cars.

Aside from engine and power plant, there are also other ways for vehicles to go green. Taking alternative transportation (public transportation, bicycles, walking) when the distance is not too far, scheduling trips during lean traffic hours, Using more environment-friendly products can also benefit the green movement and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Research Point To Microbe As Cause For Ocean's Methane Levels

Methane is a simple chemical molecule and is a principal component of natural gas. The chemical formula for methane is CH₄. It is colorless and odorless.

Methane is created by bacteria that feeds on organic material. During the process, some methane can get trapped in the ground while some rises up to the atmosphere where it breaks down to (CO₂) and water (H₂O).

When methane is burned in the presence of oxygen (O₂, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water (H₂O) is produced. The principal use of methane is as a fuel.

Methane is classified as a greenhouse gas. It has a global warming potential (GWP) of 30. This means that for each kilogram (k) of methane emitted to the atmosphere has the equivalent forcing effect on the Earth's climate of 30 times that of carbon dioxide over a 100 year period. Methane has a short lifespan and usually breaks down within 10 years of its release to the atmosphere.

According to an April 2012 NASA report, cracks in Arctic sea ice are leaking alarming levels of methane.

Study identifies prime source of ocean methane

Up to 4 percent of the methane on Earth comes from the ocean's oxygen-rich waters, but scientists have been unable to identify the source of this potent greenhouse gas. Now researchers report that they have found the culprit: a bit of "weird chemistry" practiced by the most abundant microbes on the planet.

The findings appear in the journal Science.

The researchers who made the discovery did not set out to explain ocean geochemistry. They were searching for new antibiotics. Their research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, explores an unusual class of potential antibiotic agents, called phosphonates, already in use in agriculture and medicine.

Many microbes produce phosphonates to thwart their competitors. Phosphonates mimic molecules the microbes use, but tend to be more resistant to enzymatic breakdown. The secret of their success is the durability of their carbon-phosphorus bond.

"We're looking at all kinds of antibiotics that have this carbon-phosphorus bond," said University of Illinois microbiology and Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) professor William Metcalf, who led the study with chemistry and IGB professor Wilfred van der Donk. "So we found genes in a microbe that we thought would make an antibiotic. They didn't. They made something different altogether."

The microbe was Nitrosopumilus maritimus, one of the most abundant organisms on the planet and a resident of the oxygen-rich regions of the open ocean. When scanning microbial genomes for promising leads, Benjamin Griffin, a postdoctoral researcher in Metcalf's lab, noticed that N. maritimus had a gene for an enzyme that resembled other enzymes involved in phosphonate biosynthesis. He saw that the microbe also contained genes to make a molecule, called HEP, which is an intermediate in phosphonate biosynthesis.

Geoengineering Through Solar Reduction Management (SRM) May Significantly Reduce Rainfall

Volcanic eruptions, such as the one of the Karymsky volcano (Russia) in 2004, release sulphur dioxide to the atmosphere, which has a cooling effect. Geoengineering an ‘artificial volcano’ to mimic this release could be a solution to global warming, but one that may have undesirable effects for the Earth.
Credit: Photo by Alexander Belousov of the Earth Observatory of Singapore

Geoengineering is the manipulation of the Earth's environment. It is also the study and implementation of ways to improve, control, or adjust the atmosphere such as weather patterns, river paths, soils, climates and sea currents on Earth.

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is a geoengineering technique to directly reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Its aim is to reduce and mitigate climate change. There are direct and indirect methods to CDR. An example of a direct method is carbon dioxide air capture. This refers to technology attempting to prevent the release of large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere (such as from fossil fuel use in power generation and other industries) by capturing the emitted gas, transporting it and ultimately, pumping it into underground geologic formations to securely store it away from the atmosphere.

An indirect method of CDR would be ocean iron fertilization. This method is done by introducing iron to the upper ocean to stimulate a phytoplankton bloom which ultimately uses the marine food chain and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Another geoengineering technique is Solar Radiation Management (SRM). SRM is basically reflecting and minimizing incoming sunlight to reduce the effect of climate change. SRM does not reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and its effect on the environment. The principal advantage of SRM is the speed with which it can be deployed and activated, as well as its low financial cost.

Geoengineering could disrupt rainfall patterns

A geoengineering solution to climate change could lead to significant rainfall reduction in Europe and North America, a team of European scientists concludes. The researchers studied how models of the Earth in a warm, CO2‑rich world respond to an artificial reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. The study is published today in Earth System Dynamics, an Open Access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Tackling climate change by reducing the solar radiation reaching our planet using climate engineering, known also as geoengineering, could result in undesirable effects for the Earth and humankind. In particular, the work by the team of German, Norwegian, French, and UK scientists shows that disruption of global and regional rainfall patterns is likely in a geoengineered climate.