High mercury levels in soil near coal-fired power plants

mercury levels in soil near a coal-fired powerplant in IndianaWe have known for some time that coal-fired power plants emit heavy metals into the air, among which is mercury. Most of these highly toxic particles end up in waterways, through which they sometimes spread as far as to other continents, contaminating fish along the way and making them unsafe for human consumption.

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Hydrogen is key to regularly shaped graphene

We have mentioned new and improved methodes for graphene production in the past, but actually the most widely used method for graphene growth over the past two years has been the so-called ‘chemical vapor deposition method.’ This is, roughly put, the decomposition of carbon-containing gases on copper foil under high temperatures.

Since little was known about the exact process, graphene sheets grown this way often contained defects and the grains were irregularly shaped and of different sizes.

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Eemian sea level rise of 8m was 95% meltwater – another paleo warning?

Eemian sea level rise: +0.7C, +8mSounds like there’s new food to calibrate our oceans’ sea level sensitivity. In red the image shows inundations around the Gulf of Mexico under Eemian sea levels. That’s ‘bye bye Houston, New Orleans, Miami.’

Two days ago we looked at the Pliocene, an epoch with CO2 concentrations around as high as they’ll be in 4 years time, 2-3 degrees higher temperatures and with average sea levels 25 meters above today’s levels.

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1000kg lab meat at 96% less GHGs

Sometimes, when confronted with the promises of technology, we are tempted to dream away to a planet where we could cheer at yet another billion extra people, where we could set our livestock free to let wolves and big cats restore ecological order and create plenty of space to regrow the ancient forests, which would once again clear the skies.

In any case we could not exclude this study in our special series on new proteins, which we may one day all be dining on.

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Graphene and water: another perfect mix

We’ve said it before and we will say it again: graphene is here to stay. This time researchers of the Monash University Department of Materials Engineering seem to have lived up to one of graphene’s long due promises: an extremely fast charging battery. And all they had to do was add some water to the mix.

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Saudi proven oil reserves no longer world’s largest – Latin American proven reserves grow 400 percent in 4 years

Proven oil reserves - Orinoco tar sands of VenezuelaAccording to a release by Latin American Energy Organisation OLADE last Thursday Venezuela has toppled Saudi Arabia as the country with the largest proven oil reserves. New discoveries have raised the proven reserves of Venezuela from 98 billion barrels of crude [IEA 2010] to 297 billion barrels [OLADE 2011].

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Trees in cities contain carbon – like anywhere else

Cities can be carbon sinks - as long as trees growUrbanisation increases the need to include city surfaces in assessments of the world’s carbon cycle. Already 4 percent of our planet’s land surface is urbanised and that percentage is likely to increase over decades to come.

But although new research shows the British city of Leicester is presently absorbing 231,000 tonnes of carbon, this is not a sink we would trust, expanding the scale in space and time – not without focused biomass management at least.

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