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reenpeace protesters clashed with coal miners at a new opencast mine on Monday in an incident highlighting Poland’s environmental dilemma on the eve of a major U.N.-led conference on climate change.

The western Polish city of Poznan will be the venue for the December 1-12 conference aimed at agreeing a new global climate package to replace the Kyoto protocol which expires in 2012.

But Poland still relies on polluting coal for more than 90 percent of its growing energy needs. Along with other ex-communist European Union states, it opposes parts of an EU climate package forcing big cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

“This is a protest against burning coal and against extracting coal from a mine like this one,” Greenpeace Poland spokesman Jacek Winiarski said at the Jozwin opencast mine near Poznan.

“We were stopped violently by miners… but fortunately nobody was hurt,” he said of the protest, which involved about two dozen Greenpeace activists waving “Quit coal!” banners.

The Jozwin mine lies near Goplo lake, listed on the EU’s Nature 2000 program aiming to safeguard threatened species in the bloc. Investments can still be conducted in such areas if studies show there is no better option.

Konin, the firm that operates Jozwin, also plans to open a second opencast mine in nearby Tomislawice but environmentalists say this could destroy Goplo, home to rare wildlife.

The company says it has all necessary permits to press ahead also with the second project, which it estimates to cost around 200 million zlotys ($65.10 million).

“We don’t plan to scrap this project. Why should we?… We will open the site in two to three years’ time. Usually such mines operate for 15 to 20 years,” Konin spokesman Radoslaw Stankiewicz told Reuters.

KING COAL

Greenpeace says Poland should cut its reliance on coal and switch to more environmentally-friendly sources of energy.

The Polish government wants to diversify the country’s energy sources without harming economic growth, especially at a time of global financial crisis which threatens to undermine Poland’s efforts to catch up with richer western Europe.

Some Poles share Greenpeace’s concerns but others say wealthier western EU states had built up strong infrastructure before embracing the environmental cause. Poland has begun to receive large-scale EU funds to modernize its dilapidated infrastructure, including roads.

Greens clashed with local residents and police two years ago in months-long protests over a key highway bypassing the Rospuda river, a wilderness area also protected by Nature 2000, an event that triggered a debate in Poland over how to balance economic growth and protect the environment.

Australia became an integral link in a network of tsunami warning hubs across the Indian and Pacific oceans with the official opening of a national monitoring centre.

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre that opened in the southern city of Melbourne joins India as a “tsunami watch provider” for 29 countries on the Indian Ocean rim that are prone to the killer waves, said Ray Canterford, head of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s disaster mitigation office.

Work on the USD 46 million centre developed by the government was launched six months after the catastrophic 2004 tsunami that killed more than 200,000 in 14 countries.

It will provide essential sea level and seismic data to the Pacific warning network to Southwest Pacific island nations. This data is critical to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii and the Japanese Meteorological Agency in Tokyo, Canterford said.

Eventually, there will be a network of several countries on the Indian Ocean rim with their own tsunami warning centres sharing scientific data, he said.

“We’re actually enhancing the capabilities of other countries in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean,” he said.

The centre relies on high-tech deep sea buoys, five of which are located northwest of Australia below Indonesia, one in northeast of Australia in the Coral Sea and two in the Tasman Sea off the southeast coast.

Indonesia, which bore the brunt of the 2004 tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people, is expected to have its own national warning centre fully operational by the end of the year, Canterford said.

A scientist of Indian origin, along with his team, is developing wireless transceivers and sensors that would collect and send data about soil moisture within a field, which would improve farming.

Ratnesh Kumar, the scientist in question from Iowa State University, is hoping that the sensors will also collect data about soil temperature and nutrient content.

The prototypes are about 2 inches wide, 4 inches long and less than an inch thick.

A major goal is to build small sensors that can do their work entirely underground. The sensors won’t need wires or above-ground antennas, so farmers could work right over the top of them.

The sensors would also be able to report their locations. That would make it easy to find sensors if a plow were to move them or when batteries need to be replaced.

Kumar, an Iowa State professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the sensors are designed to be buried about a foot deep in a grid pattern 80 to 160 feet apart. The sensors would relay data along the grid to a central computer that would record information for researchers or farmers.

The sensors could help researchers understand precisely how water moves through a field. They could help them develop better models to predict crop growth and yield.

They could also help them understand the carbon and nitrogen cycles within soils, as well as help farmers manage their nutrient and water resources, which could maximize yields and profits, and minimize environmental impacts.

“If nutrients are in excess of what’s needed, it doesn’t help the yield,” Kumar said. “Those resources just drain into the environment,” he said further.

Stuart Birrell, an Iowa State associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering and a part of the sensor research team, said the project will provide the kind of real-time, high-resolution data that researchers and producers have been looking for.

“A challenge of precision agriculture is collecting data at a high enough resolution that you can make good decisions,” Birrell said.

“These sensors would provide very high resolution data for producers and researchers. They would give us another data layer to explain differences in yield and help us make management decisions,” he said further.

According to Kumar, the sensors have worked underground in preliminary, point-to-point tests. A network of multiple sensors will be buried in a research field later this fall for more testing and development.

“The goal is to hopefully have these sensors in production agriculture,” he said. “But first we need to develop them and answer more questions about how cost-effective they could be,” he said further.

The United Nations said on Monday that swathes of mountain ranges worldwide risk losing their glaciers by the end of the century if global warming continues at its projected rate.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report that whilst nature has always observed a certain periodic rate of deglaciation, the current trends observed from the Arctic to Central Europe and South America are of a different order.

“The ongoing trend of worldwide and rapid, if not accelerating, glacier shrinkage on the century time scale is most likely to be of a non-periodic nature, and may lead to the deglaciation of large parts of many mountain ranges by the end of the 21st century,” the report warned.

The report said that glaciers lost on average a mass of more than half a metre water equivalent in the period 1996-2005, which is twice the ice loss of the previous decade (1986-95) and over four times the rate of the period 1976-85.

The UNEP report comes shortly after scientists warned that they could no longer rule out a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet, which could see much of the world’s coastline drowned by rising seas.

Earlier this year, UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said the rate of glacier disappearance made it essential that “everyone sits up and takes notice”.

He said the 2009 climate convention in Copenhagen would provide the true litmus test of governments’ commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon pollution from fossil fuels damaging Earth’s climate system.

“Otherwise, and like the glaciers, our room for manoeuvre and the opportunity to act may simply melt away,” Steiner warned.

The race to go green has taken to the high seas with two Japanese companies saying they would begin work on the world’s first ship to have propulsion engines partially powered by solar energy.Japan’s biggest shipping line Nippon Yusen KK and Nippon Oil Corp said solar panels capable of generating 40 kilowatts of electricity would be placed on top of a 60,000 tonne car carrier to be used by Toyota Motor Corp.

The solar panels would help conserve up to 6.5 percent of fuel oil used in powering diesel engines that generate electricity at any given moment.

Solar panels for an average home usually generate 3.5 kilowatts of electricity.

The system is expected to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1-2 percent, or about 20 tonnes per year, said Hideyuki Dohi, general manager at Nippon Oil’s energy system development department.

Nippon Yusen will invest about 150 million yen ($1.4 million) in the solar panel system to be designed by Nippon Oil.

Solar panels capable of generating several kilowatts of electricity have been used on large vessels before but their use has been limited to power for the crew’s living quarters.

Damage to the panels from salt and vibration remain hurdles to be overcome.

The ship is scheduled to be completed in December.

“If it’s possible, we want to aim for the full commercialization of the system in the next three to five years,” Nippon Oil Executive Vice President Ikutoshi Matsumura told reporters.

i live in Puyallup Washington USA right by Mount Rainer does any one live by that area to and do you have a plane for what your going to do if Mountain blew.is there a phone number to call lets say you got people ederly people and there would be no way we could get them in a car and were would we go

Well, most volcanoes that have recently been a problem in the past decades in America have been smokers. We haven’t had the large lava flows that you see in Hawii or other past volcanoe’s where flow’s were running down the streets of the city.
So, in planning anything, the immediate area looks like a bomb had gone off. Ground zero is wiped out, tree’s flattened, etc so…if you live too close…you do’nt have any chance unless you want to run off every time you feel a rumbling.
If you actually are far enough to overlook the mount. Then you do have a chance but need to plan wisely. I use to live in tacoma, work in Bremerton and been around the area but can’t recall how close Puyallup is to Mt. Raineir. So the only advice i can give is to be practical.
You can’t pile in the car and escape because that’s what everyone else will be doing. If too close to the volcanoe, alot of cars will stall as the ash clogs the air filters. Your best chance is to just survive it.
Chances are the volcanoe will be a smoker. The ash is anything but. If you look at volcanic ash under the microscope, it looks like jagged glass. So if your not perched on the mount in a gully sitting in the path of lava flow…if there is much. I’d say prepare your house to filter the air. Since there’s elderly there and you wouldn’t be able to make a hasty escape, I’d label where the A/C breakers are so you know or anyone else can figure it out. Seal the large air leaks in the house, make sure you have a good filter on your ductwork in case you have to run air intakes. A house is designed with a certain ability to “breath” and by code, built to have a certain amount of air change. This would be minimized when the ash starts covering everything thing. You might want to stock up an emergency pantry, have some sort of breathing filters for personal use, and any means you can think of to prevent the ash from getting into your house.
Bathroom vents generally expell air, but alot of these ducts don’t have a flap to prevent intake when the fan isn’t running. Maybe have multiple inlets with higher efficiency filters on your A/C or air handler ducts. Even if the filter works at first, it will get clogged, and you’d have to shut it down. Having multilple inlet options gives you a chance to keep fresh air flowing into the house without introducting much ash.
maybe have spare oxygen tanks available.
After you wait it out and the ash settles, i’m sure emergency services will get around to the neighborhoods to help people. You might want to invest in one of the flashing porch lights so you can signal people outside without having to open the doors and break your ash seal.

Richard Branson gained press time by declaring that he would give over $3 Billion dollars to fight “Global Warming”.

This cause an uproar of glee among believers as that wanted all business men now to donate some of their profits to help fight the good fight, and Branson’s gift reinforced the view that global warming is real.

Now it known that Branson’s gift was just a publicity stunt to increase his corporations profits. His offer helped market his company, helped boost sales and increased profits. He never really cared about the environment.

Global warming is a multi billion dollar business. Algore has made millions from both his movie AND his holdings in Occidental Petroleum while flying his corporate jet to events telling people they are evil because they drive an SUV.

Why would Wal-Mart care what light bulb you used in your home unless they helped write the laws that made you buy new bulbs that cost 10 times what the old ones cost?

When will believers acknowledge that there are many in their ranks that are using them as a tool in order that they can have fat profits?

When will anyone say that “global warming” is just a scheme for some to make money?

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story….

I agree with every little thing you said. Its like religion trying to scare to belive the world is about to end today.

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Global warming is a scam to scare people into raising taxes and accepting more control over their lives. Con men like you describe are jumping on the money train, and getting rich meanwhile the fear of GW has caused high fuel and food prices. This is one of the most successful scams in human history.

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

like Nuclear,solar,wind.etc

From the 3rd link, below:

“The coal industry uses the term “clean coal” to describe technologies designed “to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation, and use”[1], with no specific quantitative limits on any emissions, particularly carbon dioxide.”

I’ve been trying to get a better handle on what is meant by “clean coal.” Terms like “subcritical” and “supercritical” and others are not well explained, and a neutral site that doesn’t bring it’s own baggage is hard to find.

Any source of energy is going to have pros and cons. But at this point, given what is known about coal and global warming, given that other, better options exist, coal for the future should be a very limited option. Nuclear power still has obstacles that are vast — the disposal problem — just recently there was a hearing at San Onofre in California, where they’ve apparently been storing materials on site for decades while a “permanent” storage site is secured — but may have a place in our energy future if some of the issues can be resolved.

Solar and wind are the best underutilized energy sources, and improving their performance and place in the broad picture is a sound plan, whatever else happens.

More research needed on this one before I can give a better answer, sorry, but a few links below that you might find interesting if you slog through the info!

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/fossi…
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/… Coal Generation Technologies
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?tit…
http://www.nationalwind.org/pdf/PhadkeFo…

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Out of all the fossil fuels coal is the workhorse of global electric power sector and is used to generate more than half of the electricity world consumes.

Coal is also world’s most abundant fossil fuel, with supplies projected to last almost 250 years or more. As coal-fired power plants generally produce the lowest-cost electricity and coal is abundant, most of the country’s economic and energy security depend on the continued use of the fuel.

Coal when burned is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. A range of technologies are being used and developed to reduce the environmental impact of coal-fired power stations. Thus, clean coal technology (CCT) is the name attributed to coal chemically washed of minerals and impurities, sometimes gasified, burned and the resulting flue gases treated with steam with the purpose of removing sulfur dioxide, and re-burned so as to make the carbon dioxide in the flue gas economically recoverable. In relation to clean coal technology, a terminology ‘carbon capture and storage’ (CCS) is being discussed. CCS is nothing but method of capturing the carbon dioxide, preventing the greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere, and storing it deep underground.

A range of approaches of CCS have been developed and have proved to be technically feasible. They have yet to be made available on a large-scale commercial basis because of the costs involved.

Therefore, clean coal technology is an effort to clean the whole power generation process. At this juncture we can not ignore the importance of coal in the present power scenario, especially, in view of energy security of a country. Exponents of CCT say, this technology would be as good as any other clean technology like nuclear. No emission.

For further information on the subject and other environmental issues please refer my blog: http://www.environmentengineering.blogsp…

http://www.environmentengineering.blogsp…

I have read of waste water plants as a part of the answer and wondered if desalinization plants were also a method gaining more interest.

The best way to find out, is to contact the California Department of Environmental Quality :

http://www.calepa.ca.gov/

Go to Water Division, and ask for on-line data bases which contain this information, or inquire as to when public meetings regarding this topic are scheduled. Attend. Ask for brochures etc.

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We have historically built desalination plants using diesel or coal powered electrical generation and or pumping.

To make this part of the solution we would need to be building the energy solution, such as solar, wave, tidal, wind, nuclear, or geothermal… some combination.

And it has to be available as the desalination plant is ready to go. But we are already deploying solar PV technology as fast as we are making it, and for many places we would want desalination, we would not have reliable wind.
And when we have no wind power we often do not have much wave power. Tidal has not proven cost effective,

Geothermal can be reliable and cost effective as can solar thermal energy. Fortunately southern California has a lot of sun that can be deployed.

But if major scale desalination projects be needed one would need to build some nuclear plants along the SanAndreos Fault.

DNR, or one of those animal places where an organization puts animals in these wildlike surroundings and study them. I seen them do it with pandas and zebras on animal planet, that looked like a pretty cool job.