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Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

Gasoline From Grass

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Biofuel Grassoline – Gasoline From Grass
Gioietta Kuo
Augusr 8 2009
Senior Fellow, American Center for International Policy Studies amcips.org

It present 25% of world energy is consumed by transport using mostly oil. As oil is on the wane, new echnologies are appearing both in the kind of motor car we drive and the fuel we use.

It is true to say that most technologies are market driven, which in turn is determined by demand. However, there are pitfalls in rushing headlong into production with a certain technology without some cool headed long term analysis of the viability and basic contradictions that might exist in the route taken by the market. For example the market may change or new technology may become available, so that the production just initiated becomes short lived with the result that the capital put into production cannot be recovered.

A good example of just this phenomenon is (more…)

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Agriculture with sea water

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Agriculture with sea water
Gioietta Kuo May 11 2009
Senior Fellow, American Center for International Policy Studies amcips.org

It is commonly believed that salt is bad for agriculture. But people living on the shores of India have had a saline based agricultural system for hundreds of years Intensive research is under way by scientists at NASA in the USA on algae and bacteria, the two most important biofuel technologies of the twenty first century. As a replacement for oil, algae is (more…)

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THE IMPORTANCE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

by Gioietta Kuo

(Dr. Kuo is a Senior Research Fellow for the American Center for International Studies)

INTRODUCTION

About 2 years ago, the consensus of world’s eminent climatologists like Sir David King and Dr James Hansen were unified in their opinion that the world could survive eventually 450 ppm – parts per million, of CO2 (then at 385 ppm) in the atmosphere. Even so, according to them, there is no time to lose, the world’s governments should adopt a radically different energy policy to eradicate fossil fuel use. If we continue business as usual in the next ten 10 years then the planet will reach a point of no return.

Since then, 2 years have passed, there has been no drastic reduction in CO2 emission in the world and CO2 concentration has increased by 2 ppm per year. In the meantime, more and more signs of global warming, such as the sharp rise in arctic temperature and Greenland ice melt, together with an improved study of data of the earth’s
climate history have the climatologists alarmed. Led (more…)

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Future Of World’s Food Security

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

by Gioietta Kuo July 21 2008
Senior Fellow, American Center for international Policy Studies, amcips.org

In a new book by Lester Brown: “ Ourgrowing The Earth, the food challenge in an age of falling water tables and rising temperatures”, he makes the point that as our population increases and our economy grows, our demand on the earth are growing, exceeding many of planets natural resources to provide food, water and other basic needs for us. Evidence of these excessive demands are everywhere: collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, rising CO2 levels, eroding soils, rising temperatures, falling water tables, melting glaciers, deteriotrating grasslands, rising seas and river running dry. In fact nearly all these environmental trends affect world’s food supply.

Indeed, we are reaching the limit of what we can draw from our planet.

In recent days, much talk has been concentrated on the shortage of oil and our energy security. Although energy is very important to us, there are in fact much greater phenomena happening right in front of our eyes that will affect us even more – that is (more…)

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Why do some civilizations collapse and others survive

Monday, July 7th, 2008

An eminent biologist and anthropologist Jared Diamond recently examined a very fundamental question: “Why did some civilizations like that of Easter island, the Maya empire and Greenland Norse collapse in history while others like Iceland and Japan survive for thousands of years?” It is very important to answer this question for it is for our society to tread carefully so as to avoid the example of the extinct civilizations in the past.

As an example of a failed civilization, (more…)

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Cuba and Haiti: The Alternative Fuel Mixture

Monday, May 12th, 2008

There is now a movement away from alternative fuels, mainly due to the shortage and high price of food products, such as corn, that is also used to make ethanol. Other arguments against ethanol are that it may be costlier to make than the current cost to refine crude oil. The Morning News,(by Aoife White, The Associated Press) May 6, 2008 edition, carried an article titled “Economist Pushes For Biofuel Cuts” stating that “The U.S. and European Union should reconsider a shift to biofuel that has helped increase food prices world-wide by turning agricultural land over to energy crops, American economist Jeffrey Sachs said Monday.” There are also those who say the shortage of oil is due in part, to the lack of refineries, and many in the United States do not want to have refineries located near their cities or finance the upfront investment for construction which is very expensive.

Another article regarding the use of agricultural land was published in The Morning News by Seth Borenstein of The Associated Press, May 11, 2008, titled “Experts: Better Soil Needed.” The article discussed the new plant seeds which were formulated to produce healthier crops, are now having difficulty producing in degraded (more…)

Posted in Energy, Environment, Food, Humanitarian, Trade | 1 Comment »

World Population Explosion

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

This article was translated into Chinese and published on Oct 8 2007 in People’s Daily , the official organ of the Chinese government.

Our planet is too small for 6,500,000,000 people.

Recent warning by United nation Population Programme (UNPP) is that the world is adding one billion more people every 12-13 years. The forecast is that from the present 6.5 billion today, it will reach 7.6 billion by 2020, 8.2 billion by 2030 and an alarming 9.0 billion by 2050.

There is a vast difference between the growth of population and the growth of food supply to feed the population. The way population grows is called ‘exponential’. That means the number of births at any time depends on the number of people present. A couple can produce 10 children and each child can produce 10 more. So in a short space of 2 generations – 40 years, there could be 100 more people on earth.

The growth of food, however, can only increase linearly if at all. For example, genetically altered (more…)

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Pillaging The Earth

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

The New York Times ran an article on January 20, 2008, titled “Timber Thieves Strike at the Heart of Lands Private and Public”. It reported that a 78 year old man had many (more…)