Off the West Coast of the United States, methane gas is trapped in frozen layers below the seafloor. New research from the University of Washington shows that water at intermediate depths is warming enough to cause these carbon deposits to melt, releasing methane into the sediments and surrounding water.

Researchers found that water off the coast of Washington is gradually warming at a depth of 500 meters, about a third of a mile down. That is the same depth where methane transforms from a solid to a gas. The research suggests that ocean warming could be triggering the release of a powerful greenhouse gas.
read more

Back in 1965, maverick scientist James Lovelock, warned an oil company that the year 2000 would not be dominated by fusion-powered cars or advanced technology, but by the changing climate.

"It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business," he said. He may have slightly under-played the effect of advanced technology on our society, but he was certainly not wrong about the environment.
read more

It has been the dream of environmentalists for years, to discover the alchemic ability to turn water into liquid gold: gasoline.
Now a company based in Dresden in Germany claims to have developed the technology to do just that. Sunfire GmbH has created an engineering installation that can synthesize petroleum-based fuels using water and carbon dioxide.

“I would call it a miracle because it completely changes the way we are producing fuels for cars, planes and also the chemical industry,” said Nils Aldag, Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Sunfire GmbH.
read more

A few weeks ago, Unknown Country reported that NASA were investing millions of dollars into a new laser-based instrument, located on the International Space Station,  which is intended to provide a unique 3-D view of Earth’s forests. The focus of its mission is to provide definitive information about the role of forests in the carbon cycle, and as such, in global warming.

The laser, known as the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar, the instrument will be the first to systematically probe the depths of the forests from space, and assess how they affect our weather systems and other ecosystems.
read more