Walking around town, my friend and I had noticed that almost every home had a pile of coal outside, soft dark chunks that people shoveled into stoves for cooking and heating. Thousands upon thousands of coal fires were loading the air with tiny dots of soot. Scientists have taken to calling these dots “black carbon,” and have steadily ratcheted up their assessments of its harm. In March, for instance, a research team led by a Mumbai environmental group estimated that black carbon and other particulate matter from India’s coal-fired power plants cause about 100,000 deaths a year.
What If We Never Run Out of Oil? - Charles C. Mann - The Atlantic - 1 views
-
-
A 31-scientist team from nine nations released a comprehensive, four-year assessment in January arguing that planetary black-carbon output is the second-biggest driver of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change; the little black specks I found on my glasses and clothes have roughly two-thirds the impact of carbon dioxide.
-
The rule of thumb is that if a well leaks more than about 3 percent” of its methane production into the air, “natural gas actually becomes dirtier than coal, from a climate-change perspective,
- ...8 more annotations...
Europe Haggles Over New Rules Aimed at Saving Fish Stocks - WSJ.com - 0 views
-
Fishermen currently discard nearly a quarter of Europe's total catch on average, and as much as 70% of the hauls in some areas, European Commission data show
-
"The law has been made by someone who doesn't know fisheries," said fisherman Geert Luickx as he painted his boat here in this North Sea port. Without financial assistance, more crew, and a bigger boat, he said, he won't be able to comply with the new law.
-
Commission data show 80% of stocks in the Mediterranean, including swordfish, and 47% of stocks in the Atlantic, including whiting off Scotland's western coast, are being exploited at levels that will lead to extinction.
- ...4 more annotations...
What If We Never Run Out of Oil? - Charles C. Mann - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
In most cases, mining tar sands involves drilling two horizontal wells, one above the other, into the bitumen layer; injecting massive gouts of high-pressure steam and solvents into the top well, liquefying the bitumen; sucking up the melted bitumen as it drips into the sand around the lower well; and then refining the bitumen into “synthetic crude oil.”
-
Economists sometimes describe a fuel in terms of its energy return on energy invested (EROEI), a measure of how much energy must be used up to acquire, process, and deliver the fuel in a useful form. OPEC oil, for example, is typically estimated to have an EROEI of 12 to 18, which means that 12 to 18 barrels of oil are produced at the wellhead for every barrel of oil consumed during their production. In this calculation, tar sands look awful: they have an EROEI of 4 to 7. (Steaming out the bitumen also requires a lot of water. Environmentalists ask, with some justification, where it all is going to come from.)
-
To obtain shale gas, companies first dig wells that reach down thousands of feet. Then, with the absurd agility of anime characters, the drills wriggle sideways to bore thousands of feet more through methane-bearing shale. Once in place, the well injects high-pressure water into the stone, creating hairline cracks. The water is mixed with chemicals and “proppant,” particles of sand or ceramic that help keep the cracks open once they have formed. Gas trapped between layers of shale seeps past the proppant and rises through the well to be collected.
- ...13 more annotations...
The Insourcing Boom - Charles Fishman - The Atlantic - 1 views
-
Both Bowman and Calvaruso knew something about “lean” manufacturing techniques—the style of factory management invented by Toyota whereby everyone has a say in critiquing and improving the way work gets done, with a focus on eliminating waste. Lean management is not a new concept, but outside of car making, it hasn’t caught on widely in the United States. It requires an open, collegial, and relentlessly self-critical mind-set among workers and bosses alike—a mind-set that is hard to create and sustain.
-
Levi Strauss used to have more than 60 domestic blue-jeans plants; today it contracts out work to 16 and owns none, and it’s hard to imagine mass-market clothing factories ever coming back in significant numbers—the work is too basic.
-
If the people who design dishwashers sit at their desks in one building, and the people who sell them to retailers and consumers sit at their desks in another building, and the people who make the dishwashers are in a different country and speak a different language—you never realize that the four screws should disappear, let alone come up with a way they can.
- ...1 more annotation...
The Insourcing Boom - Charles Fishman - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
The Insourcing Boom
-
But in 2011, Appliance Park employed not even a tenth of the people it did in its heyday.
-
By 1955, Appliance Park employed 16,000 workers. By the 1960s, the sixth building had been built, the union workforce was turning out 60,000 appliances a week,
- ...4 more annotations...
Mr. China Comes to America - James Fallows - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
Mr. China Comes to America
Nato defence spending falls despite promises to reverse cuts - BBC News - 0 views
-
Nato defence spending falls despite promises to reverse cuts
-
Europe's failure to pay its way in Nato is seriously worrying the US, which already provides 75% of all Nato defence expenditure (the US spends 3.8% of its GDP on defence).
-
Without any of its own maritime patrol aircraft, the UK recently had to request the help of Nato allies to search for suspected Russian submarines off the west coast of Scotland. In Germany there have been reports of serious malfunctions in military equipment.
- ...3 more annotations...
The Insourcing Boom - Charles Fishman - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
The magic is in that head: GE has put a small heat pump up there, and the GeoSpring pulls ambient heat from the air to help heat water. As a result, the GeoSpring uses some 60 percent less electricity than a typical water heater. (You can also control it using your iPhone.)
-
The GeoSpring is an innovative product in a mature category
-
We really had zero communications into the assembly line there.”
- ...10 more annotations...
1 - 13 of 13
Showing 20▼ items per page