35.5m yr old global cooling caused by sharp decline in CO2

A new research has found that prehistoric global cooling that started in Antarctica about 35.5 million years ago, was caused by a sharp drop in the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels.

Even after the continent of Antarctica had drifted to near its present location, its climate was subtropical. Then, 35.5 million years ago, ice formed on Antarctica in about 100,000 years, which is an "overnight" shift in geological terms.

"Our studies show that just over thirty-five million years ago, 'poof,' there was an ice sheet where there had been subtropical temperatures before," said Matthew Huber, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University.


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Cellulosic ethanol: Future Fuel compete with Gas

By 2030 in the U.S. Ethanol will replace gasoline by one-third of annual usage. The Joint study was released on Wednesday by Sandia National Laboratories and General Motors. Its amazing to see that 75 billion gallons of ethanol produced only from Cellulosic ethanol out of 90 billion gallons of it.

Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel mainly produced from agricultural and forestry wastage like wood, non-edible parts of plants, grasses etc. It is a environment friendly and renewable energy for transportation fuel.

The difference between Cellulosic ethanol and Conventional ethanol :

Conventional ethanol obtained from edible parts of the food grains, which is usually less productive. Where as cellulosic ethanol can be obtained from non edible parts of food grains like cereal straws and corn stover or from dedicated crops.

Dedicated crops includes sugarcane, cotton woods and switch grass. These crops are raw material for biofuel energy. And all these crops are ability to re-grow with short term life cycle. Advantage is it allows to multiple harvesting without re-planting. These food raw materials are cheap and ample.

Cellulosic ethanol emits less carbon so directly reduces green house effect.

Resource :

Cellulosic Ethanol

View a slide show of Celunol's process.

Will Cellulosic Ethanol Take Off ?

Cellulosic ethanol could compete with gas, study says

Ancient Soil Renewal Technique Assists to fight Against Global Warming

Present, scientists, environmental groups and policymakers forming the next world climate agreement, see biochar not only as an important tool for renewal soils, but as a effective tool for fighting global warming.
Early inhabitants of the Amazon Basin fertilized their fields with burned menure organic materials-bio char-and changed one of the earth's most infertile soils into one of the most productive. These early environmentalist disappeared 500 years ago, but centuries later, their soil is still productive in organic matter and nutrients.

Biochar contains carbon rich product found by pyrolysis(transformation) of the biomass. In extremely predicting integrated new soil management technique, bio-char plays fundamental element. It is adequate to stopping slash-and-burn farming in the wet tropics by making nutrient-poor, acidic soils productive. Intrinsically it gives one of the few sustainable strategies to stop deforestation while at the same time removing hunger amongst existence farmers at the forest margins. Biochar doubles as a stable carbon sink, making it a key tool in the climate fight.

Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering, told the possibilities of biochar exists in its capability to isolate-catch and store-huge amounts of carbon while also displacing fossil fuel energy, effectively doubling its carbon affect.

Steiner stated that almost any kind of organic material-peanut shells, pine chips and even poultry litter-can be burned in air-tight conditions, a process called pyrolysis. The results are biochar, a highly porous charcoal that helps soil sustain nutrients and water, and gases and heat that can be used as energy.

Biochar can acquire up to 50 percent of the carbon stored in biomass and establishes a significant carbon sink, as long as renewable resources are used and biochar is used as a soil rectification.

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