Greenhouse gases

A/C may contribute significantly to global warming

As the planet is warming and as more and more people can afford it, air conditioning is becoming more and more widespread. This wouldn’t be a problem if A/C weren’t emitting greenhouse gases. To the NY Times : ” The leading scientists have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses …

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Chinese emissions are 20% higher than expected

Two different news regarding China hit the twitterverse on the same day last week. First, the bad one : The People’s Republic’s greenhouse gases emissions may have been underestimated by as much as 20 percent. This huge difference – as much as the annual emissions of Japan, or 1.4 Gt of CO2 –  can be explained …

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CO2 concentration reaches 400 ppm

This is historical : carbon dioxide concentration has reached in several places over the arctic a concentration of 400 parts per million. This doesn’t seem to be much, but pre-industrial levels were of 280 ppm. As you might remember, the safe level is considered by the scientific community to be at 350 ppm. CO2 concentration …

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IEA : Global CO2 emissions increased in 2011

As the situation is getting more and more desperate and climate gets weirder, global greenhouse gases emissions keep on increasing globally. As the International Energy Agency stated last week : ” Global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International …

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Japan set ambitious 2050 goals, feed-in tariffs

Japan seems to become pretty serious about climate change as it will soon make official a law mandating for 80 percent cuts of greenhouse gases emissions  by 2050 (compared to 1990, just in line with IPCC recommendations) Not totally unrelated to these most commendable goals, the country enacted generous feed-in tariffs for solar, wind and …

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Mexico passes ambitious climate law

Yesterday the Mexican Lower House (Chamber of Deputies) passed a most ambitious law to fight climate change.  As the local newspapers report, this was a landslide as there was 280 votes for and only ten against. As Kees van der Leun noted on Twitter, the country would slash by 50 percent its greenhouse gases by …

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A year after Fukushima, and the future of nuclear

A year after the catastrophic events in Fukushima, Japan is planning to be nuclear free by May 5. It is I believe a good opportunity to focus on the future of the industry. Opinions diverge on this critical issue. Some believe nuclear is bound to disappear as it has a negative learning curve and that …

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Oil refining : another reason to prefer electric cars

While browsing my tweets of January and February, I found an interesting article giving a new reason of why electric cars and vehicles in general are great and necessary in a low carbon economy. Indeed, removing the need for oil not only reduces greenhouse gases emissions from the burning of that said oil, but also …

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Six countries to cooperate on climate

This is not as good as it should be as carbon dioxide is not tackled, but this new initiative might help us in mitigating climate change in the short to medium term and improves health of million of people. According to various sources, the United States, China as well as other countries are willing to …

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2011 rewrote the record books on climate

Here is a rundown of all the extreme weather we witnessed in the past few months around the world  and the numerous calamities that struck all continents without exception… To The Guardian : ” The year 2011 was another ecologically tumultuous year with greenhouse gases rise to record levels, Arctic sea ice nearly equalling 2007’s …

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