Klean Industries's Blog

Killing Wolves: A Product of Alberta’s Big Oil and Gas Boom

Klean Blog Team — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:18:03 +0000

The development of the tar sands and other oil and gas fields in Alberta has carved up the Canadian province’s boreal forest, threatening herds of woodland caribou. But rather than protect caribou habitat, officials have taken a controversial step: the large-scale killing of the wolves that prey on the caribou. by ed struzik In the [...]

Environmental Economics & Industrial Sustainability Society

Klean Blog Team — Sun, 15 May 2011 01:15:59 +0000

We have created a new domain for our information blog because we felt that there is a pressing need for an environmental solutions based blog that offers more tangible “real life” solutions and applications to create the long last change that society needs. We also want to be more interactive and connective with our network [...]

IEA: Current Government Policies Inadequate to Address Climate Change

Klean Blog Team — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:34:07 +0000

The broad greenhouse gas policy commitments and plans of countries around the world will not be sufficient to avoid significant increases in average global temperatures, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA released its annual World Energy Outlook on November 9, and this year’s report includes a “New Policies Scenario” that includes commitments [...]

Which companies use BPA-free cans to package food?

Klean Blog Team — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 04:03:02 +0000

Major food and beverage brands, including Hain Celestial, H.J. Heinz and ConAgra, are starting to use cans free of the estrogen-like chemical bisphenol A, says a report released Thursday. A report released Thursday, Seeking Safer Packaging 2010, grades 26 companies for their efforts to eliminate the estrogen-like chemical BPA from their packaging. CAPTIONCourtesy of Seeking Safer Packaging 2010"Companies are actually moving faster than regulators in phasing out BPA from food and beverage packaging," says Emily Stone of Green Century Capital Management, an investment advisory firm that co-authored the report with As You Sow, an environmental advocacy group.

Energy’s Biggest Horizon Post Deepwater

Klean Blog Team — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:44:42 +0000

In the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon, BP’s stocks have rallied, Halliburton has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and many people are wondering if the world has slipped into a self-induced amnesia.

But not Mark Mills, founding partner of Digital Power Capital, a private equity firm that invests in energy-oriented technologies. To Mills, a physicist, it seems perfectly normal that BP and Halliburton are poised to make the comeback of the century just three months after the worst oil spill in history was capped.

It’s simple: Every minute of every day, the world spends roughly $4 million on oil. By this Friday, exactly 90 days since the Deepwater Horizon gusher got plugged, $504 billion of oil—or 7.2 billion barrels—¬¬ will have been pumped into hundreds of millions of automobiles, airplanes and ships across the globe.

Energy Efficiency: Cure for Mortgage Meltdown?

Klean Blog Team — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:36:55 +0000

My first reaction was that the Alliance to Save Energy was stretching a bit by titling its October 6 talk: “Is energy efficiency the key to recovery from the recession?” But after hearing David Goldstein’s presentation, I must admit I’m thinking about energy efficiency in a whole different way. Goldstein, author of the book, “Invisible Energy: Strategies to Rescue the Economy and Save the Planet” crunched the numbers to show the enormous economic relief efficiency could bring to both the average homeowner and the US government. He went as far as to suggest we may have averted the mortgage meltdown had we instituted more efficiency over the last few decades. Sound extreme? Consider this.

Pew Pushes for Protection of Whales, Penguins, Seals and Krill

Klean Blog Team — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:35:16 +0000

The Pew Environment Group’s Antarctic Krill Conservation Project (AKCP) urges the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to require scientific observers on board all krill fishing vessels and to intensify efforts at data collection to reduce uncertainties when managing this fishery. The AKCP also calls on CCAMLR to conduct a new krill biomass survey and to implement new measures to protect penguins which rely on the species for food. The commercial fishery for Antarctic krill–tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans that serve as the building blocks of the Southern Ocean food chain–threatens Antarctic species such as penguins, whales and seals. Most krill fishing occurs in coastal waters and overlaps with penguin foraging areas. The greatest demand today for Antarctic krill comes from the aquaculture industry, which uses it as a component of fish feed.

Study: Climate change to cause extreme world drought

Klean Blog Team — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:57:41 +0000

The United States and many other heavily populated countries could face extreme drought in the next 30 years unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, a new study finds.

Warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry conditions that have rarely, if ever, been observed in modern times, according to the study by Aiguo Dai, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The Colorado-based center is funded by National Science Foundation.

"We are facing the possibility of widespread drought in the coming decades, but this has yet to be fully recognized by both the public and the climate change research community," Dai said. "If the projections in this study come even close to being realized, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous."

The study, using computer models by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, finds most of the world will become extremely dry, including southeast Asia, most of North and South America, southern Europe, much of Africa, Australia and the Middle East.

Lowered Evapotranspiration Causing Drying and Heating of Southern Hemisphere

Klean Blog Team — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:43:49 +0000

The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a group of researchers conclude in the first major study to ever examine "evapotranspiration" on a global basis. (Credit: iStockphoto/Domenico Pellegriti)

Huge Parts of World Are Drying Up: Land 'Evapotranspiration' Taking Unexpected Turn

From ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2010) --- The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a group of researchers conclude in the first major study to ever examine "evapotranspiration" on a global basis.

Most climate models have suggested that evapotranspiration, which is the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere, would increase with global warming. The new research, published online this week in the journal Nature, found that's exactly what was happening from 1982 to the late 1990s.

Does America have a water crisis?

Klean Blog Team — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:38:47 +0000

There’s quite a bit of water pollution in the United States and Europe.

In a study published in Nature, researchers found that 80 percent of people on the planet live near rivers - and those waterways are in crisis.

Not only will the poor state of the rivers affect our water supply, it will affect the plants and animals in it.

University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers found that “pollution, water diversion, and introduced species” were the main culprits behind the threatened river system.