capture

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to pull its support of a $1.8 billion project to build a power plant that captures pollution underground, according to published reports.

The FutureGen project is meant to test cutting-edge carbon capture and storage technology, which is supposed to dramatically reduce emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants.

Carbon capture and storage is considered an important technology to reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions, but the technology is unproven at a large scale. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year called for government funding of carbon capture projects in the United … Read more

The Canadian province of Alberta wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2050 through a big push into carbon capture and sequestration.

Under a new plan unfurled by the government today, Alberta will spend up to $500 million on technology and initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. In all, the government hopes to prevent 200 million tons of gases from getting into the atmosphere. If it hits its goals, emissions will be lower in 2050 than in 2005.

A whopping 70 percent of that reduction will likely be accomplished by capturing the gases and storing it … Read more

Phase One, a maker of high-end digital-camera components, has released the first major update to its raw-image conversion software in years.

Capture One 4 includes a new user interface with maximum screen real estate devoted to the picture itself, better abilities to edit images' shadows and highlights, support for reading and writing Adobe Systems' Digital Negative (DNG) format, and the dark background that's currently popular as a way to get photos to stand out better.

The software costs $129, but upgrades are free. It runs on Windows XP SP2 and Vista and on Mac OS X 10.4.11 … Read more

The response to my post last week about how to convert digital photo collections to DVD slide shows was a resounding, "Whatever. How can I grab a screenshot from a video or DVD?"

Who knew that the number of would-be "screencappers" was so legion? Regardless, I'm your humble servant, and your wish is generally my command.

First off, for image screen captures of digital video files, I highly recommend VLC Media Player. I know I mention the free media player quite a bit, but it's still the cream of the freeware video crop for me due to its light footprint and flexibility.… Read more

Scientists are starting to consider planet-scale engineering projects to slow the pace of climate change--anything from causing massive plankton growth in the ocean to putting a giant mirror in space above Greenland to stop ice from melting.

These ideas to alter the earth's environment at large scale, called "geoengineering," are increasingly being articulated and seriously evaluated even though they are likely to be controversial.

Earlier this month, climate scientists held a conference in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss the importance of geoengineering projects. The overall consensus was that geoengineering deserves further study, according to one of the organizers … Read more

As a faithful corporate blogger, I take a lot of screenshots. I've mentioned that in previous roundups of screen capture apps. When I found myself at the Under the Radar conference yesterday (see all posts) without a handy screen capture installed, I quickly downloaded Jing Project, for Windows and Mac.

Jing Project, thoroughly reviewed on Webware.com, floats a sun-yellow ball to the top of the screen. Hovering over this orb produces three rays, one of which launches cross-hairs that, when dragged around content, captures the image. I love this method for high-pressure blogging, even though for everyday use … Read more

In some of the most ambitious efforts by green tech start-ups, a handful of businesses have emerged with plans to capture large amounts of carbon dioxide by stimulating the growth of ocean plankton.

On Monday, a group of watchdog environmental bodies, including Greenpeace and the ETC Group voiced their opposition to a project proposal from Australia-based Ocean Nourishment.

The company is said to be planning on "seeding" the Sulu Sea between the Philippines and Borneo with a nitrogen nutrient called urea, which would be pumped into the ocean from a special plant.

The idea behind these geo-engineering projects … Read more

Electricity generator NRG Energy and Powerspan announced on Friday a plan to create one of the largest projects to capture and bury the carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants.

The companies said the facility in Sugar Land, Texas will capture and sequester the emissions equal to a 125 megawatt generator. That would make it a commercial-scale demonstration of the technology, one the biggest thus far.

Experts have singled out carbon capture and sequestration as an important technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal, one of the dirtiest and abundant fuels. The idea is to build the carbon capturing operations … Read more

"Without carbon capture and sequestration, we are all toast."

Jiang Lin, a scientist with the China Sustainable Energy Program with Lawrence Berkeley Lab, issued that gloomy proclamation earlier this week, and it's a fitting description of the current world situation when it comes to global warming. To make it worse, I asked Lin about how the world is responding to the challenge. Not well.

"We haven't invested in deep research or spent much money in testing out the scenarios," he said. "There are a lot of uncertainties."

Still, it's not over … Read more