Oort Cloud

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

The Oort Cloud is an immense spherical cloud surrounding our Solar System. Extending about 30 trillion kilometers (18 trillion miles) from the Sun, it was first proposed in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort. The vast distance of the Oort cloud is considered to be the outer edge of the Solar System – where the Sun’s orb of physical and gravitational influence ends.

The Oort Cloud contains billions of icy bodies in solar orbit. Occasionally, passing stars disturb the orbit of one of these bodies, causing it to come streaking into the inner solar system as a long-period comet. These comets have very large orbits and are observed in the inner solar system only once. In contrast, short-period comets take less than 200 years to orbit the Sun and they travel along the plane in which most of the planets orbit. They come from a region beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt, named for astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who proposed its existence in 1951.

Within the cloud, comets are typically tens of millions of kilometers apart. They are weakly bound to the sun, so passing stars and other forces can readily change their orbits, sending them into the inner solar system or out to interstellar space. This is especially true of comets on the outer edges of the Oort cloud.

Tidal and molecular forces also contribute to influencing the orbits of bodies within the Oort Cloud. A giant molecular cloud is by far more massive than the Sun. It is an accumulation of cold hydrogen that is the birthplace of stars and solar systems. These are infrequently encountered, about every 300-500 million years, but when they are encountered, they can violently redistribute comets within the Oort cloud. The total mass of comets in the Oort cloud is estimated to be 40 times that of Earth. This matter comes from different places in the Solar System, and from different distances from the Sun – this explains the varying chemical compositions among these comets.

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Indonesia aims to wrap up forest-carbon rules

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

Indonesia hopes to lay out a clear set of regulations before June on using carbon credits to protect rainforests so the rules can be discussed in upcoming international talks, a top climate official said.
The United Nations has backed a scheme called REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, in which developing nations could potentially earn billions of dollars from selling carbon credits in return for saving their forests.
Investors from banks to forestry firms and NGOs are lining up to set up REDD schemes in Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia, Africa and South America.
But the scheme is in its infancy and regulations are needed guide how REDD projects will work, will ensure the forests remain intact, how much carbon they will save and sequester and how money from selling the credits will flow to local communities.
Agus Purnomo, head of Indonesia’s National Council on Climate Change, told Reuters on Thursday it was crucial to manage expectations over plans to save huge swathes of forest.

“Money is not going to fall from the sky just because we have forests,” said Purnomo, who heads the council set up last July under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The council coordinates policy and developing priorities on climate change.
REDD won backing at U.N.-led climate talks in Bali in 2007 and trial schemes are now being developed. The World Bank in Jakarta says 20 trial schemes are at various stages of development in Indonesia. Banks, including Merrill Lynch and Macquarie Group of Australia, are among the investors.
Indonesia is also under pressure to curb deforestation, particularly illegal logging.
A report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain’s Department for International Development says up to 84 percent of Indonesia’s carbon emissions come from deforestation, forest fires and peatland degradation.

REDD REVENUE

“I am pushing to have REDD ongoing, (a) scheme (that) is clear before June, so that it will also contribute to the international negotiation process,” he said, referring to a round of U.N.-led climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

The talks are part of a series in the run up to main talks in the Danish capital at the end of the year aimed at trying to agree on a broader replacement for the U.N. Kyoto Protocol climate pact.

Purnomo said one of the key unresolved issues over REDD was on taxation and the split in revenue for investors.

“The potential investors have been kicking and screaming with the proposal from the ministry of forestry but none of them are actually producing a good alternative arrangement,” he said.

Some potential investors wanted to be taxed on their net profits, he said, adding this could be tricky since there would have to be an agreement on the level of costs.

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Waste could be crucial in search for cleaner fuels

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

What we throw away could soon be used to power our cars, if projects to produce ethanol from commercial waste are ramped up. Some companies are exploring the environmental and financial benefits of putting waste to good use and are developing technology to produce bioethanol. Magazine paper company UPM Kymmene and renewable fuel supplier Lassila & Tikanoja are currently running pilot tests to produce bioethanol from the pulp-based waste created by the paper industry. “We will start discussions with the European Union over investment support in February and hope to make a decision on a full-scale plant by the end of the year,” Lassi Heitanen, senior expert at Lassila & Tikanoja, told Reuters. By developing waste processing units, Finnish energy company St1 Oy’s biofuel division hopes to produce 70 million litres a year of bioethanol by the end of 2011. Industrial and household waste is vastly under-utilised and is usually burned or disposed of in a landfill. Decaying waste can generate methane which is even more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. Using it to produce a cleaner type of fuel could also help reach EU’s target that 10 percent of the bloc’ transport fuel should come from renewable sources by 2020. Ethanol burns with a greater efficiency than gasoline, thereby emitting less carbon dioxide. The world produced 52 billion litres of ethanol in 2007, mostly in the United States and Brazil. In a similar move to use waste efficiently, British renewable energy company New Earth Energy has partnered with waste management group Biossence to generate renewable energy in the northwest of the UK. They want to use household and industrial waste as an energy source at two plants in the northwest of the country by 2010.

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Seed bank for the world threatened by financial crisis

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

A seed bank that is trying to collect every type of plant in the world is now under threat from the global financial crisis, its director says.

The Millennium Seed Bank Project aims to house all the 300,000 different plant species known to exist to ensure future biodiversity and protect a vital source of food and medicines, director Paul Smith said.

The project is on track to collect 10 percent of the total by 2010 but the financial crisis is drying up funding, casting serious doubts on future collections, he said.

About half the funding comes from the National Lottery and the rest from corporate donations.

But with businesses tightening their belts in the economic downturn and preparation for the 2012 London Olympics sapping lottery money, the pot is about to run dry.

Smith hopes government money and international groups will come through with the nearly 10 million pounds per year needed to keep the bank going. But if that does not happen, new collections and research will stop, he said.

“We would say that this is an exceptional bank and that the assets within it, the capital that we have built up, is unique and we can’t squander this,” Smith told Reuters Television during a tour of the facility south of London.

Each seed costs about 2,000 pounds to collect and store.

The Millennium Seed Bank Project is the only project of its kind in the world which aims to collect and conserve all the planet’s wild plant diversity, Smith said.

Human activities, such as clearing forests, have put flora and fauna at risk. Because most of the world’s food and medicines come from nature, protecting plant species is critical, scientists say.

For example, it was only 30 years ago that Catharanthus roseus, a small pink plant also known as the Madagascan periwinkle, was found to contain compounds used in cancer drugs.

“Thirteen million hectares of forest are cleared every year — that’s an area the size of England — and of course the plant species which occur there are going the same way,” Smith said.

There are 1,400 other seed banks in the world that store about 0.6 percent of the world’s plant diversity. The Millennium Project run by Kew Gardens — one of the world’s oldest botanical gardens — aims to collect the rest, he said.

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