James Hansen: Copenhagen Climate Talks Must Collapse

Shanta Barley, reporter

Outspoken US climate scientist James Hansen has announced that climate talks next week in Copenhagen must collapse if the world is to tackle global warming effectively, reports the UK's Guardian newspaper.

A leading climatologist and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Hansen's testimony to US Congress in 1988 played a critical role in raising public awareness of global warming.

Now Hansen's back in the spotlight. He has raised eyebrows by saying that any agreement that emerges from Copenhagen will be counter-productive if it plumps for a "cap and trade" system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track, because it's a disaster track," Hansen told the Guardian's US environment correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg.

"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means."

Hansen's trademark pessimism comes at a time of hesitant optimism: yesterday India joined the club of major emitters that will offer to cut greenhouse gas emissions at Copenhagen next week, alongside China, the US and the EU.

So why is the man who has probably done more than any other person on Earth to tackle climate change so keen that Copenhagen goes belly-up? Mainly because he disagrees violently with key governments over how best to control climate change.

Many politicians believe that the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is for governments to set limits on emissions while polluters buy and sell carbon credits - or "permits to pollute," as Goldenberg calls them - but Hansen disagrees.

"This is analagous to the indulgences that the Catholic church sold in the Middle Ages. The bishops collected lots of money and the sinners got redemption. Both parties liked that arrangement despite its absurdity. That is exactly what's happening," he says.

In Hansen's view, the only way to cut emissions is through an ever-increasing tax on carbon emissions. He believes that the "carbon tax" should start at around $1 per gallon of petrol, with revenue returning directly to the public purse, according to the UK's Times Online.

There's no room for compromise, Hansen says.

"This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill. On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%."

Whether or not Hansen's call for the Copenhagen talks to fail is as effective as environmentalist George Monbiot's recent call for another leading climate change researcher to step down, the timing of his outburst is not inconvenient: his first book, Storms of my Grandchildren, comes out next week.

Source : here

Dinosaur-Killing Impact set Earth to Broil, not Burn

The asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago didn't incinerate life on our planet's surface – it just broiled it, a new study suggests. The work resolves nagging questions about a theory that the impact triggered deadly wildfires around the world, but it also raises new questions about just what led to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The impact of a 10 Km asteroid is blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs and most other species on the planet. Early computer models showed that more than half of the debris blasted into space by the impact would fall into the atmosphere within eight hours.

The models predicted the rain of shock-heated debris would radiate heat as intensely as an oven set to "broil" (260 °C) for at least 20 minutes, and perhaps a couple of hours. Intense heating for that long would heat wood to its ignition temperature, causing global wildfires.

Yet some species survived, and the global layer of impact debris doesn't contain as much soot as would be expected from burning the world's forests, raising questions about the extent of post-impact wildfires.

To explain the discrepancy, Tamara Goldin of the University of Vienna and Jay Melosh of Purdue University in Indiana studied how ejecta falling through the atmosphere might affect heat transfer from the top of the atmosphere to the ground. Earlier models considered only how atmospheric greenhouse gases would absorb heat.

The study reveals that the first debris to re-enter the atmosphere just a few minutes after the impact helped protect the surface from the debris that followed. "The actual ejecta themselves were getting in the way of the thermal radiation [in the atmosphere] and shielding the Earth," Goldin told New Scientist.

Burning sky
As a result, the surface felt the full heat from the sky for only a few minutes. As more particles drifted down, they blocked more and more of the heat from above, preventing the world's forests from igniting. "With the short pulse [of intense heat], it's really hard to get ignition" far from the impact site, Goldin says.

Surface life would have been broiled, but not burnt to a crisp. Animals that were able to take refuge underground or in the water were likely able to survive the short period of intense heat, explaining why not all life was killed.

"Now we have models and data that match," says Claire Belcher of University College, Dublin, who was not involved with the study.

Climate change
Wendy Wolbach of DePaul University in Chicago, who in 1985 proposed that soot found at the end of the Cretaceous came from global wildfires, agrees. The heat shielding effect "makes sense", she told New Scientist.

Without global wildfires, other mechanisms are needed to explain the mass extinction, Belcher says. These include the idea that dust in the atmosphere cut off sunlight in an "impact winter" that lasted for years before emissions released after the impact caused long-term global warming.

Acid rain following the impact may also have played a role in the extinction, as could the additional stress on global climate from the massive volcanic eruptions that occurred 65 million years ago in India's Deccan Traps.

Journal reference: Geology (vol 37, p 1135)

Source : here

Want fresh air? Give your house a nose job…

Central heating may keep your house warm, but it can also make the air stuffy. A new ventilation system that works like the nose of a small desert rat might let your house "breathe", freshening the air while maintaining cosiness.

So claims Steven Vogel of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Like some other desert creatures, the bipedal kangaroo rat, he says, helps maintain its body temperature using a clever nasal architecture.

On exhaling, the rat's nasal passageways are heated by the outgoing air. When it inhales, those warmed passageways heat the incoming air. This heat exchange ensures little body heat is lost.

Home comforts
Vogel wondered if a house or apartment could be made to breathe this way – gaining fresh air with low heat loss – and he built a model of a one-room dwelling to try it. He calls it the Nose House.

Using two fan-driven heat exchangers, he was able to mimic the rodent's trick. As one exchanger pushes air into the room, the other lets air out – then their roles reverse.

Each exchanger comprises a 40-centimetre-long plywood chamber, 5-centimetres-square in cross-section. Inside each chamber there are 17 half-millimetre thick aluminium plates that store heat as warm air leaves it, and which warm the air that is sucked in on the next "breath".

"This was as crude an analogy as I can imagine but it worked," Vogel says. "This non-optimised version saved over half the heat that would have been lost using steady-flow fans alone. "Well-sealed houses are very unpleasant and this may get around it."

Big problems
Vogel is not sure if his idea will scale up, though: to warm the average house, the chambers would need to be 6 metres long. But he plans to test whether the system might work. Patent searches have shown no similar heat exchange system working in anti-phase to mimic breathing, he notes.

Peter Gammack, concept design director for Dyson in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, UK, is impressed. "This is a very interesting biomimetics-inspired idea. Small animals have evolved to work in very efficient ways and the clever use of two alternating heat exchangers is elegant," he says. "It could be a good way of improving air quality in buildings in an energy-efficient manner."

Gammack adds that Vogel is right to be concerned about moving to full-scale machines, as Dyson discovered when developing its bladeless fan recently. "We had to extensively test even the minutest size change – it's surprising how dramatically scale affects effectiveness."

Journal reference: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, DOI:10.1088/1748-3182/4/4/046004

Source : here

Pressurised Solvent Extraction Taken to a New Dimension

The main focus of modern analytical laboratories is minimising the time that elapses between sample analysis and result generation. Even today, despite modern extraction techniques, the extraction process can be very time consuming. Thanks to unique design of Buchi's (Switzerland) new Speed Extractor, pressured solvent extraction is taken to a new dimension. With its parallel format, up to six samples can be extracted simultaneously in approximately 20 to 40 minutes. As a result, incoming batches can be processed immediately and the analysis results is available on the same day if subsequent extensive purification steps are required. This allows for a previously unheard level of efficiency and throughput: up to 96 samples in one work day.

The Speed Extractor also distinguishes itself by its user-friendliness: The desired method is loaded, the extraction cells are then sealed automatically, and at the push of a button, six samples are extracted - no error-prone sealing, no time-consuming programming.
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New SmartView Provides Reliable Semi-Quantitative ICP-AES Analysis

New SmartView provides reliable semi-quantitative ICP-AES analysis. Why not make a fast semi-quantitative analysis to check the sample matrix or the concentration level of each element? The new smartview software makes this quick analysis provide reliable results and saves time during method development. SmartView uses multi-line analysis by ICP-AES. This software module developed by HORIBA Jobin Yvon(France) uses all the information available in the emission spectrum and pre-defined calibration curves for the elements. In routine analysis, the nature of the sample varies. With wastewater analysis, for example this often leads to background structure changes or spectral interferences. To reduce these variations, an Advanced Background Correction mode (ABC) is used. The rejection of outliers, by a simple calculation which does not need multiple acquisitions, is also applied. SmartView with several lines per element, intelligent background correction and rejection of outliers, allows reliable and fast semi-quantitative analysis.

Alphasense 'A Series' NDIR Sensor - Second to None

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NDIR Technology Sensor for CO2 or HC Detection

IRNET is the base of the new family of infrared sensors developed by N.E.T. (Italy). Using a patented optical cavity combined with latest NDIR Technology the result is a high performing, robust sensor for hydrocarbon and Carbon dioxide monitoring with an estimated lifetime of over 5 years. The wide operating temperature (-40'C to 50'C) and low power consumption makes it suitable for fixed gas detection instrument. It is designed to fit most instrument makers in the standard 20 mm and 32 mm diameter sizes.
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