The Cellar Image of the Day

From boston.com
A group of photographs to examine the state of our environment, on World Environment Day.

Quote:

Small fishing boats tied to the banks of the Chaohu lake, where a pollution-linked algae bloom has reappeared, in Hefei, eastern China's Anhui province on June 4, 2008. Algae blooms are common on many Chinese freshwater lakes and are chiefly caused by untreated sewage containing high concentrations of nitrogen, a main ingredient in detergents and fertilisers, as more than 70 percent of China's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water have been contaminated by pollution. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

C'mon, the Irish-Chinese have been doing this for years on St. Pan-rice Day.

Chengchow: Turning the Huang He (Yellow River) qīng

After yesterdays thread about the black balls etc, the first picture in this thread is the same colour as my pool

Maybe they need some black balls out there

Me! Me! I have two!

Hey wait a minute. Does this mean the Chinese will have all the algae diesel too??

...oh, but they're a developing nation, so it doesn't matter that they've polluted 90% of their underground water sources. Let's complain about those people in Minneapolis who idle for longer than 3 minutes...cause we're developed and all.

Ahhhhh.... China. The land of unregulated growth and destruction of their environment as they beg us to control green house gas while they build a new coal fired plant each week. Not surprising.

Quote:

As Boeing prepares for more biofuel test flights, the airframer is focusing its efforts on accelerating the development of algae-based energy sources. The rapidly growing raw material could potentially be converted into large amounts of fuel without taking away from food supplies. Algae does not reuire freshwater to thrive.
Boeing is focused on “next generation” alternatives fuels, not palm oil or ethanol-based fuels, as a company spokesman explains,“We saw a spike in rice prices. Those are things we don’t want to compete with.”

“[Algae] provides a lot of the good qualities that are needed to ensure that aviation biofuel needs are met in a sustainable way,” says Darrin Morgan, who oversees strategy development and execution for Boeing’s sustainable biofuels program. Morgan and Boeing director of environmental strategy Billy Glover will co-chair a steering committee of the Algal Biomass Organization, a nonprofit that promotes and advocates for the development of commercially viable transportation fuels.

In order to achieve that viability, Algae-based fuels need a supply chain Morgan says, adding such fuels are in the early stages of development. The organization aims to accelerate the development of such power sources. Having successfully completed its first part-biofuel powered flight, Virgin Atlantic is hoping a trial can be performed using algae as a biofuel source next year.

Boeing and Virgin Atlantic used a 20% mix composed of babassu oil and coconut oil on one of the carrier’s GE CF6-powered Boeing 747-400s on the test performed earlier this year. In the meantime, Jatropha-sourced biofuel will power the next Boeing test flight in partnership with Rolls-Royce. One RB211 engine will use the alternative fuel during an Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400 flight in the fourth quarter. Continental Airlines has not identified what type of fuel it will use in its test flight. In partnership with Boeing and GE Aviation, the demonstration will be in the first half of 2009 using a next-generation 737 with CFM International CFM56-7B engines.

Aside from proving that aircraft can run on biofuel, the test flight helped create demand from within the fuel supply chain, spurring the creation of new fuel types, Morgan says. “The fuel used in the [test] flight came about because we asked,” he says.

So, next we'll be buying pollution products from China to fuel our economy. I'm assuming people in this country won't allow us to drill for our own pollution products?

Happy Father's Day!
Over the weekend I watched The Fugitive with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. Afterwards we went downtown and had a beer.

I mean I watched the movie starring them.

Part of the movie's action takes place in downtown Chicago on St. Patrick's Day

, and a short establishing shot was very similar to this pic I posted the other day on page 1:

Right: Pic to fill space to right of pic under discussion

The river-dyeing boat was making the exact same curlicue, probably in front of the same bridge. Son of a gun--I'm going to fast-forward the tape and find that shot again. . . .

1. The main difference is that in the movie the river is already very green, so you don't totally get that it was the guys in the boat dyeing it and mixing it.

2. Also, in the pic the boat is stationary in the frame, whereas in the movie it is in motion.

3. In the pic the boat is just east of the State Street Bridge (we're looking west). In the movie the boat is just east of the Dearborn Avenue Bridge, the next bridge west in the pic.

4. The still camera is way up, plus over a block away from the boat, probably shooting out a window in the 360 N. Michigan Building (SW corner of Wacker & Michigan; the building lines up with the river like this because of the northward bend in the river starting in the bottom left of the pic). The movie camera is right down on the State Street Bridge, less than a block away from the boat, and toward the bridge's north end (in the pic this is the nearest bridge, and toward that bridgetender's "house" at right, between us and Marina City).

5. Both shots are toward the west, but the movie shot starts by looking SW toward Dearborn & Wacker, then pans right, following the boat, to look almost straight W.

6. The boats are making almost the exact same curlicue, but in the movie the boat swings out farther to the right (north). Since the camera is near the N end of the State Street Bridge, it still doesn't pan right enough to show any buildings on the north bank of the river (notably in pic, Marina City).

7. While panning right, the movie camera also tilts up a bit, so the end of the movie shot and the pic both show the warehouses and smokestacks in the distance, past Wolf Point (where the North and South Branches of the Chicago River join to form the Main Stem).

8. The Fugitive was released in 1993. The pic isn't too new, either, because this Wolf Point vista (7) is now horribly blocked off by the blah, 38-story Riverbend Condominiums (built 2000-2002). It doesn't look like the Smith & Wollensky restaurant has been plopped down onto the Marina City plaza yet (mid-'90s?), either.

Been doing it since 1962; don't know when they started doing it at Chengchow (Zhèngzhōu).

To read all about dyeing the river and see three St. Paddy's Days' worth of pics, plus stuff on other Irish traditions in Chicago, this woman with a Chicago architecture blog is the hostess with the mostes':
http://lynnbecker.com/repeat/stpat/stpat.htm
http://lynnbecker.com/repeat/stpat/08stpat.htm

snip" The United States still has a vast lead in carbon dioxide emissions per person. The average American is responsible for 19.4 tons." snip
!9.4 tons per person per year? per minute, per lifetime? Is that CO2 counting exhalation? And who's been here measuring my CO2 anyway. If I can make 19.4 tons float in the atmosphere, I don't think we have an energy crisis anymore. I think this is just more nonsense, trying to make America look bad because we succeed more than any other system out there, and have been for 200 years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spudcon

That data seems to be tons/person/year.

Here's CO2 emissions data for about 40 countries for 2002, along with GNP per capita.

So, HLJ, how does that graph have credibility, given what Imigo computed of 106.23 pounds per day per American. That figure will be higher yet, if you consider children too young to have access to CO2 emitting equipment. But still, even 106+lbs a day is ridiclous.

It's not what you personally produce. It's your share of all the power plant's output, your share of all the motor vehicles, trains and planes, your share of all the concrete production and construction. It adds up to nearly 20 tons per person, per year.

I've never had it fully explained to me yet (but maybe Al Gore can produce the explanation - he does that well, with glib answers for most things that are difficult to explain) .. how Carbon Dioxide, which is a heavier-than-air gas .. can climb to sufficient stratospheric heights, and in sufficient quantities, to act as a global warming agent .. ??

Note the simple explanation on the following site .. and I quote ..

CO2 gas is 1.5 times as heavy as air, thus if released to the air it will concentrate at low elevations.

http://www.uigi.com/carbondioxide.html (it's towards the bottom of the first text box ..)

Now, I notice on the following, MI university, glib GW site .. no mention ANYWHERE of Carbon Dioxide being 1.5 times as heavy as air .. and concentrating at LOW ELEVATIONS .. ??

Global Warming Horror .. http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm

Maybe I missed something in science class?? .. maybe it was when I was asleep?? .. or maybe when it was I was too busy admiring how shapely, and how long, the legs were, on Miss Snorks .. ??

Every gallon of gasoline burned produces about 20 pounds of CO2.
From here.

CO2 from electricity production varies based on the fuel source. For wind, solar, and even biomass, the CO2 is essentially zero, once the equipment is operating (though there is CO2 generated in the manufacture and installation of the equipment).

Electricity produced from natural gas creates less CO2 than electricity produced from coal (because coal has more carbon per unit of energy).

According to Wikipedia:

Quote:

... Since the useful energy output of coal is about 30% of the 6.67 kW·h/kg(coal), we can say about 2 kW·h/kg(coal) of energy is produced. Since 1 kg coal roughly translates as 1.83 kg of CO2, we can say that using electricity from coal produces CO2 at a rate of about 0.915 kg/(kW·h), or about 0.254 kg/MJ.

This estimate compares favourably with the U.S. Energy Information Agency's 1999 report on CO2 emissions for energy generation, which quotes a specific emission rate of 950 g CO2/(kW·h). By comparison, generation from oil in the U.S. was 890 g CO2/(kW·h), while natural gas was 600 g CO2/(kW·h). Estimates for specific emission from nuclear power, hydro, and wind energy vary, but are about 100 times lower. See environmental effects of nuclear power for estimates.
...

[quote=HungLikeJesus;463720]Every gallon of gasoline burned produces about 20 pounds of CO2.
From here.

Explain how you create 20lbs of CO2 from 6.5 lbs of gasoline?

Having read all the above, and thank you Imigo for doing the math, it's obvious that humankind is producing vast amounts of CO2. A lot of that is wasteful uses, such as politicians and celebrities using private jets to criss cross the world for selfish purposes. Having said that, has anyone ever measured how much CO2(not to mention other poisonous gasses) is produced by one average volcano? I would guess one volcano per year would trump all of mankind's production per year. Of course, there are usually more than one volcano per year spewing pollution into the air, sometimes much higher amounts than the average. Am I right?

In addition to the binding of oxygen, mentioned in the original link, the per-capita CO2 production from that gallon of gas adds the production and transportation of that gallon of gas. So 20lb is the lower limit.

This morning's online Times has an article on Chinese algae. Excerpts follow, then a link to the entire article:

To Save Olympic Sailing Races, China Fights Algae

A barge at Qingdao, site of the Olympic sailing regatta in August, was surrounded by algae last week. The Chinese have begun a huge cleanup effort. (EyePress, via Associated Press)

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: July 1, 2008

BEIJING — With less than six weeks before it plays host to the Olympic sailing regatta, the city of Qingdao, China, has mobilized thousands of people and an armada of small boats to clean up an algal bloom choking the coastline and threatening to impede the competition.

Local officials have begun an intense effort to clean up the algae by mid-July. News reports estimate as many as 20,000 people have either volunteered or been ordered to participate in the operation [I'm guessing been ordered], while 1,000 boats are scooping algae out of the Yellow Sea. . . .

Algae blooms now affect more than 5,000 square miles of seawater, Xinhua reported.

“We will make all our efforts to finish this job,” said a propaganda official in Qingdao, who asked not to be named because of the political delicacy of the issue [also because Beijing is cracking down on propaganda officials who misspeak, terminating them--with a bullet to the back of the head after a show trial]. “Now, forces from the entire province have become involved.” He said ships and boats have been dispatched from two other coastal cities, Rizhao and Yantai, to help haul away the algae.

Yuan Zhiping, an official with the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee, said Sunday that the government would try to block algae from floating into the Olympic sailing area by installing in the sea a fenced perimeter more than 30 miles long. [See "Bigger Europe" thread.] . . .

The massive outbreak comes with some sailing teams already in Qingdao preparing for the Olympics. Photographs in the Australian news media showed an Australian team seemingly stuck in a carpet of algae during a training run. [Or so it seemed, relative to an American team training nearby.

Whoops

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

] . . .

Air quality remains a serious concern in Beijing. On Tuesday the city will begin removing 300,000 high-polluting vehicles, mostly trucks, from local roads. Later in July the city will institute temporary restrictions to remove half of all motor vehicles from the streets.

But air quality remains such a large problem that officials are also preparing contingency plans that could force factories across much of northern China to close temporarily if conditions warrant. [Great. First gas prices, then food prices. Now Wally World prices.]

Full article

hahaha

Would they prevent the phosphate pollution that is enabling the algae bloom?? NoooOOOOooo. Instead they just run out and pick up all the algae..

China Says Algae Cleared for Sailing

By EDWARD WONG
Published: July 16, 2008

BEIJING — Olympic athletes competing in waters off the east coast of China can literally expect smooth sailing in August, a Chinese official said Tuesday.

The official, Lin Hong, said from the coastal city of Qingdao that efforts to clean up large amounts of green algae had been successful. Barriers have been erected to keep the algae from infiltrating waters where Olympic sailing events will be held, said Ms. Lin, spokeswoman for the Qingdao Emergency Center on Algae Disposal.

Photos posted on sohu.com, a popular Chinese Web portal, showed waters supposedly around Qingdao devoid of algae. . . .

Ms. Lin said that by Sunday, there was no trace of algae in the waters designated for Olympic events. By 3:30 p.m. Monday, she said, volunteers and workers had cleared a total of 419,000 tons of algae from the water and 333,000 tons from the seashore.
It was unclear what caused the algae to bloom around Qingdao.

Full article

Dumplings boiled in algae juice

"Helix algae juice boiled dumplings.Spirulina contains protein and amino acid 65%, 20% carbohydrate, lipid 5%, 7% and 3%, mineral water, In the area of nutrition than any other animals, plants, grains and other foods are more comprehensive, effective, FAO recommended in the 21st Century 'in the best food.' WHO describes as a '21st century the best of health products' "