pollution

A sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary.

Is first eInk magazine an e-waste misstep? - Fast CompanyEsquire's experimental eInk issue will make an ecological mess, according to a Fast Company calculation, which says producing the magazine would lead to electronics waste and emit as much carbon dioxide as 15 Hummers over a year.

Tying wind power to power lines - Greentech Media Wind energy can be cheaper than solar, but tying it to the grid remains a costly challenge. Still, some investors see the problem as an opportunity to profit.

Manure could provide as much energy as renewables - Earth2Tech … Read more

Despite advertised measures to decrease pollution, as the one-month countdown to the Beijing Olympics approaches, the government's numbers rank Beijing as having the dirtiest air in China.

With a rating of 98, officially a "blue sky day" but only by two points, Beijing yesterday had the dirtiest air among monitored cities according to the Chinese government Web site that releases daily pollution figures.

Only four other cities, including the capitals of Sichuan, Qinghai, and Liaoning Provinces, ranked above 90 on the scale.

This does not mean that the air will not get cleaner this month. Large numbers … Read more

A chemical used to make LCD televisions and semiconductors could cause more global warming than coal-fired power plants, a report warns.

Nitrogen trifluoride is a "missing greenhouse gas," according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on June 26. It's used in chemical vapor deposition, which makes liquid crystal displays, semiconductors, and synthetic diamond.

Production of the chemical could double to 8,000 metric tons in 2009, atmospheric chemist Michael Prather, who co-wrote the report, told New Scientist.

Nitrogen trifluoride's globe-warming effect reportedly could be 17,000 times stronger than that of carbon … Read more

Sailing 4,000 miles on the Pacific Ocean made Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal sick. It wasn't waves that turned their stomachs, but the amount of plastic garbage they encountered on a voyage with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation earlier this year.

The activists wanted more people to share their disgust about plastic litter that swirls, relatively unexplored, in continent-size patches of ocean.

To that end, they have built a motor-less craft from 15,000 recycled beverage bottles, fishing nets, and the cockpit of a Cessna, and are sailing it more than 2,000 miles from southern California to … Read more

Smoke cigars, do a partial load of laundry, drink bottled water, and feel no shame. That's what a campaign against a carbon trading bill is urging.

The latest parody of the proliferation of "green" social-networking sites and eco-friendly events comes via "Carbon Belch Day," a campaign from the conservative Grassfire.org alliance that encourages people to pollute as much as possible on June 12.

So far, more than 140,000 people have signed a petition against "climate alarmism," according to Ron De Jong, spokesman for Grassfire.org. If the effort attracts half a … Read more

Most Americans live and work in buildings awash in chemicals blamed for asthma, lung cancer, and a host of other maladies.

The best way to clean the air could be with a green thumb, according to Bill Wolverton, a former NASA environmental scientist who has spent more than 30 years studying how plants purify the air. The results of his research could come to market this fall as a household air filter that looks like a potted plant.

"Every chemical we tested, plants could take them out," said Wolverton, who originally worked on life support systems for the … Read more

New methods of using satellites to examine clouds are helping scientists to understand how pollution influences rainfall.

Researchers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have used a group of satellites known as the Afternoon Constellation, or A-Train, to peer into the chemical composition and behaviors of clouds.

"Typically, it is very hard to get a sense of how important the effect of pollution on clouds is," Anne Douglass, deputy project scientist for NASA's Aura satellite, said in a statement. "With the A-Train, we can see the clouds every day and we're getting confirmation on … Read more

It's been clear for some time now that USB gadget makers are getting desperate for new products to plug the ubiquitous port, but this one may be one of the most ill-conceived.

USB air purifiers (or at least gadgets that make that claim) are nothing new, but the timing seems particularly bad for this mini-ionizer seen on GeekAlerts. Obviously, these folks didn't get the memo from the Sharper Image bankruptcy case and its "Ionic Breeze" travails.

Note to USB mavens: It's probably better to play it safe and stick with that aromatherapy stuff.

Chinese authorities in January announced they would ban ultrathin plastic bags, and make customers pay for reusable canvas grocery bags, in an effort to reduce waste.

A Beijing Review article quotes a Hangzhou supermarket manager on the old days, when shopping didn't produce billions of bags worth of waste that will biodegrade only after 200 years, if at all.

"When I was a child, my mother always took me to the vegetable market with a bamboo basket. She put a bowl in the basket for holding bean curd. When we bought sugar powder or salt, the sellers would … Read more