As ice melts, heat builds up!

The amount of sea ice in the Arctic has fallen to the lowest level on record, a confirmation of the drastic warming in the region and a likely harbinger of larger changes to come. Satellites tracking the extent of the sea ice found over the weekend that it covered about 1.58 million square miles, or less than 30 percent of the Arctic Ocean’s surface, scientists said. The National Snow and Ice Data Center, a government-sponsored research agency in Boulder, Colo., announced the findings on Monday in collaboration with NASA.

While the melting of sea ice does not raise global sea levels, because the floating ice is already displacing its weight in seawater, the sharp warming that is causing the sea ice to melt also threatens land ice, notably the Greenland ice sheet, which is melting at an increasing rate. Melting land ice does raise sea levels.

Already, the reduction in sea ice is altering weather patterns in the Arctic region, and perhaps beyond. It is putting stress on the ecology of the region and causing rapid erosion of shorelines that are now exposed to more vigorous waves. It has consequences for weather in the Northern Hemisphere’s middle latitudes, including in the United States. Research suggests that air circulation patterns are being altered in a way that favors more extremes, like heat waves and droughts.

The melting offers easier access to oil and other mineral deposits. Witness the rush by all nations to stake claims and begin mineral exploration in the Arctic.

The average temperature of the region is rising more than twice as fast as that of the earth as a whole, confirming a prediction first made in 1896: that increasing levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels would have an especially large impact in the Arctic. One reason is that the white surface of the ice reflects a great deal of sunlight back to space, but the darker water and land exposed when the ice melts absorb more heat from the sun, which in turns leads to additional melting, more sunlight absorption and so on — a feedback loop that scientists call Arctic amplification. Anybody's guess what will happen as weather patterns turn haywire.

Food vs energy

Not just what we eat, but how we produce our energy has impact on water. China’s and India’s plans to build more coal-fired power plants to meet electricity needs aren’t feasible according to GE because of a lack of water needed to cool the plants World Resources Institute reports that 79 percent of India’s new power capacity is being built in areas of limited water availability.

Coal-fired power plants are extremely water intensive, particularly in India where typical plants consume 5-7 cubic meters of water per Megawatt hour, while plants built more recently with the latest technology use 3.5-4 cubic meters of water/Mwh.

Almost 71 proposed coal plants in drought-prone Vidarbha in Maharashtra would consume water enough to irrigate more than 410,000 hectares of land. But guess what, the clean alternative, nuclear plants, need 25% more water than coal  based plants! Where will the water come from in various parts of the water-stressed country? Does anyone make these calculations or analysis before commissioning a nuclear plant? With falling agriculturing productivity, can we afford diverting more water away from irrigation?

Turn vegan, help the thirsty

The world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages. "There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations," the report from the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.
Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-erratic world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes five to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet. One third of the world's arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals. Other options to feed people include eliminating waste and increasing trade between countries in food surplus and those in deficit.

"Nine hundred million people already go hungry and 2 billion people are malnourished in spite of the fact that per capita food production continues to increase," they said. "With 70% of all available water being in agriculture, growing more food to feed an additional 2 billion people by 2050 will place greater pressure on available water and land."

Dire warnings of water scarcity limiting food production come as Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for staples such as corn and wheat have risen nearly 50% on international markets since June, triggered by severe droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people are already facing serious food shortages across the Sahel.

Algae as source -- many questions left

With so much talk on biofuels, we cannot forget algae, the most spoken source candidate. Algae are high on the genetic engineering agenda as a potential source for biofuel, and hence, they should be subjected to independent studies of any environmental risks that could be linked to cultivating algae for this purpose, two prominent researchers say.

Would genetically engineered algae be able to survive in the wild, asks Allison Snow, professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University and lead author of the paper. "If they're grown in big, open ponds, which is mainly what we’re talking about, could the newer types of microalgae get out into nature and mingle? We need to know if they can survive and whether they can hybridize or evolve to become more prolific when they get out of a controlled environment," Snow says.

If they can survive, we also need to know whether some types of genetically engineered blue-green algae, for example, could produce toxins or harmful algal blooms -- or both.

And because algae are so small and could be dispersed by rough weather or wildlife activity, biologists worry that any transgenes they contain to enhance their growth and strength could be transferred to other species in a way that could upset a fragile ecosystem.

There are a lot of unknowns about this area of research and development in microalgae, and that's largely because algae don't have the breeding history that other crops have. In addition, few details are publicly available because much of this information remains confidential as businesses compete to be the first to commercialize their genetically altered algae.

In the same way that certain crop plants are bred with genes to help them repel pests and tolerate harsh conditions, different species of algae are likely being genetically engineered to grow rapidly because mass quantities of these tiny species will be needed to produce adequate fuel supplies. The authors recommend, for starters, a comparative examination of genetically engineered algae strains intended for large-scale cultivation with their natural counterparts to determine the basic differences between the two.

 

Carbon comes in handy in producing fuel!

A soil bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha has a natural tendency, whenever it is stressed, to stop growing and put all its energy into making complex carbon compounds. Now scientists at MIT have learnt a trick by which they have fooled the bacteria into making fuel instead.

They've tinkered with its genes to persuade it to make fuel -- specifically, a kind of alcohol called isobutanol that can be directly substituted for, or blended with, gasoline. In its natural state, when the microbe's source of essential nutrients (such as nitrate or phosphate) is restricted, it will go into carbon-storage mode, essentially storing away food for later use when it senses that resources are limited.

What it does is take whatever carbon is available, and store it in the form of a polymer, which is similar in its properties to a lot of petroleum-based plastics. By knocking out a few genes, inserting a gene from another organism, and tinkering with the expression of other genes, the team of scientists were able to redirect the microbe to make fuel instead of plastic.

While the team is focusing on getting the microbe to use CO2 as a carbon source, with slightly different modifications the same microbe could also potentially turn almost any source of carbon, including agricultural waste or municipal waste, into useful fuel!

The team has demonstrated success in modifying the microbe's genes so that it converts carbon into isobutanol in an ongoing process. In continuous culture, substantial amounts of isobutanol was obtained. Now, the researchers are focusing on finding ways to optimize the system to increase the rate of production and to design bioreactors to scale the process up to industrial levels.

That's something -- getting the oldest (and original) inhabitants of the planet to spin gold from straw, no fairy tale! In this case, the straw was making things too hot for the planet!

Biofuel process

A new process for converting municipal waste, algae, corn stalks and similar material to gasoline, diesel and jet fuel is showing the same promise in larger plants as it did in laboratory-scale devices, the developers reported at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on August 20. Moving steadily toward having multiple demonstration-scale facilities in operation by 2014, with each facility producing a range of 3,500-17,500 gallons of fuel a day from non-food plant material, the process holds promise.

The technology, termed Integrated Hydropyrolysis andHydroconversion  (IH2), has been developed by the Gas Technology Institute (GTI). Next will be the designing of commercial-scale facilities that could produce as much as 300,000 gallons per day from the same kinds of feedstocks. The technology involves use of internally generated hydrogen and a series of proprietary catalysts, which jump-start chemical reactions that otherwise would happen slowly or not at all.

The process uses as its raw material, or "feedstock," virtually any kind of non-food biomass material -- including wood, cornstalks and cobs, algae, aquatic plants and municipal solid waste ― and produces gasoline, jet fuel or diesel fuel.

GTI is currently operating two pilot plants to test and refine the process. Both use wood, corn stalks and leaves or algae. The smaller plant has a capacity of just one pound of biomass per hour, and can produce 72-157 gallons of fuel per ton of dry, ash-free feedstock, depending on feedstock type. The second plant can handle more than 100 pounds of biomass per hour and is designed to operate continuously, like a commercial facility.

With transport accounting for a major chunk of emissions, any alternative cleaner is welcome.

Biofuels still hold promise

Environmental concerns, high oil prices, and limited resources are just some of the factors that will help push biofuel consumption to 135 billion gallons by 2018, according to a new report from Global Industry Analysts. The value of the global biofuels market in 2011 was $83 billion. Global government support in research and development (R&D), production, public policy, and the push to use it in transportation industries is also providing some important underlying support for biofuels growth. Asia is expected to show some real growth potential, increasing by a compound annual growth rate of 28.8% during the reporting period.

Next-generation biofuels, including second and the third generation biofuels, which are currently under development, are predicted to offer more benefits when compared to first generation biofuels. These include cellulosic ethanol, BTL from solid biowaste, and renewable diesel, to name a few. However, these will take a decade before reaching the stage of commercialisation. With the process of conversion of cellulose into sugars for fermentation being quite difficult, research is underway for developing microbes, enzymes, and fungi that could breakdown different types of cellulose into sugars.

One must remember though that all this presupposes a stable climate and good crop. The corn debacle this time in the US is expected to push food prices up and will also affect any objective to derive biofuel. These are where uncertainties in the system will decide the growth, rather than technology alone!