or to arrest poachers saving thousands of dollars in fuel that is normally spent cruising the ocean in search of poachers.
Unlike moving from our current dependence on fossil fuels there is no alternative to phosphorus and if it runs out our global food production system would grind to a halt.
Digging up and burning stored solar energy (in the form of fossil fuels) allows us to extract phosphorus
Back Burning and Fuel Reduction This article was published originally at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices:
The idea is to reduce the intensity of subsequent fires at the same place by removing fine surface fuels such as leaf litter.
In dense eucalypt forests (such as wet sclerophyll forests) fuel-reduction burning is impractical because of the risk of uncontrollable fires sustained by heavy fuel loads that only become flammable in dry conditions.
For example with extreme heat and winds eucalypt crowns can catch on fire regardless of the amount of leaf litter and surface fuel.
Fuel reduction has to be applied frequently. Fuel loads build up quickly often returning to a carrying capacity
(when litter fall is balanced by decomposition) between 10 and 20 years. This underpins fuel-reduction targets.
In Victoria for instance the 5%fuel-reduction target means a given area of bush will be burnt every 20 years.
But ecologists are concerned that such high frequencies can have damaging effects on plant and animal species that require longer fire-free intervals to complete their life cycles.
There is also much debate about the effectiveness of fuel-reduction burning given that a huge area of landscape needs to be treated
There is growing evidence that the best benefits of fuel-reduction burning are close to the bushland suburbs (also known as the wildland-urban interface.
Because of these constraints attention is increasingly being focused on managing fuel without burning. This can involve using herbivores
The difference between fuel-reduction burning and back burning is effectively the same as the difference between elective and emergency surgery.
Long unburnt areas can accumulate very heavy fuel loads resulting in ecologically destructive fires. But it is also important to acknowledge that wildfires achieve fuel reduction too.
Fuel-reduction burning will remain a key tool that must be incorporated cleverly in landscape fire planning.
This will need to involve targeted fuel treatments around areas vulnerable to bushfires as well as the development of buffer zones that can be used to contain wildfires using techniques like back burning and direct attack using water and fire retardants.
After long focusing on fuel economy and energy production environmentalists and scientists are now promoting a diet of more plants and less meat to slow climate change but why?
These nutrients fuel phytoplankton growth in the sunlit surface waters. Since 1950 California has experienced more winters with weak coastal upwelling than in the last five centuries.
Although there are four oil refineries in the state only 761 Montanans worked in the industry last year.
or anthropogenic sources of methane rice production landfills and burning fossil fuels for example domesticated ruminants are the largest source worldwide.
#Straw Could Power Jets Straw is thought often of as a fuel for horses but if a French research project pans out passenger jets could soon fuel up with biofuels derived from this agricultural byproduct.
The new fuel would put agricultural waste to work instead of diverting food crops to make biofuels.
But critics have said biofuel production causes food shortages by replacing edible crops with plants intended for use in fuels.
The process of creating these new fuels wouldn't be very different from that used for typical biofuels.
In order to make agricultural waste into a suitable fuel for jet engines manufacturers would first need to break it down into sugars mixed with yeast
which are similar to traditional jet fuels. When mixed with kerosene theses hydrocarbons can be burned in jet engines.
Relying on this type of fuel could also save money. No extra crops would need to be grown to make the biofuel
and the dependability of the fuel source could insulate airlines from spikes in fuel prices c
which normally only lasts through early spring by robbing the flames of the dry fuel they need to flare up.
and there is plenty of fuel in the forests left to burn. But two fires had the conditions
and the amount of fuel on the ground both were poised to be record-breaking. However fire crews
What largely helped to prevent that from happening was the foresight of the U s. Forest Service managers of Coconino National Forest which in years prior to the fire implemented restoration-based hazardous-fuel reduction treatments.
and provide ample fuel for high-severity crown fires that kill old-growth trees. These catastrophic fires can be difficult and costly to contain
in addition to excess fuels climate change is influencing the frequency and size of fires. One of the ways this is playing out is in the boom and bust of wet and dry seasons.
During wetter years fuels build up. As drought conditions set in during drier years the abundant fuels become tinder dry
and when they ignite the fires take off. Forest restoration vital to ecosystems and to Arizona While the San juan and Slide fires provide good examples of successful treatments they are also clear indications that Arizona leaders cannot be complacent.
and hazardous fuel reduction treatments outside of the WUI landscape-scale fires will continue to occur.
It adds to the fuel as well as makes it more likely that catastrophically sized forest fires might start.
China and India saw their per capita carbon emission from fossil fuel and cement production go from about two tons and one ton respectively in 1990 to almost eight tons and two tons respectively in 2012.
are doomed we to rely on fossil fuels for eternity? The infinite potential to harness the inexhaustible energy of the sun is limited only by human imagination printable solar cells
Fossil fuels need only tide us over until our ingenuity will allow us to wean ourselves from them.
perhaps including fuel crops, and how they might be altered. They are also thinking of trying much higher resolution climate modelling to see
This means that the accumulating ground layer of flammable dry wood never gets thick enough to provide a major source of fuel for an enormous fire.
This is a substantial amount, equivalent to almost 20%of carbon emissions from fossil-fuel burning. Tropical forest thus accounts for around 40%of the global terrestrial carbon sink.
California in clean-fuel drive: Nature Newsthe state of California has adopted regulations to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from transportation fuels,
codifying evidence that biofuels are significantly dirtier than they were thought once to be. The California Air Resources Board approved its'low-carbon fuel standard'on 23 april,
requiring fuel providers to cut the greenhouse-gas emissions from fuels by 10%by 2020,
We really think this is the future of fuels policy globally says Anthony Eggert, a science adviser to the board.
He says the policy should send a signal to the private sector and drive clean transportation fuels and infrastructure into the market.
The regulation includes greenhouse-gas-emissions calculations for the life cycle of all fuels. To meet the requirement,
refiners and importers would have to improve their production methods or mix and match the fuels that they sell.
Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in WASHINGTON DC, questions the science behind indirect emissions and says California has overstated vastly the problem.
but the low-carbon fuel standard is exactly the right approach. The US Environmental protection agency is reviewing its own ruling that will establish greenhouse-gas criteria under the national biofuels mandate.
The California regulation also covers fuels produced from the Canadian tar sands, which produce more emissions than conventional oil because of the energy-intensive extraction process.
The low-carbon fuel standard could also prove a barrier to coal-based fuels, while providing a boost to vehicles powered by natural gas and electricity.
'adopted last month, sets a greenhouse-gas standard for fuels and then allows companies to pick their technologies,
By contrast, US fuel policy is focused on biofuels. The federal mandate ramps up from 9 billion gallons of biofuels in 2008 (compared with almost 138 billion gallons of gasoline) to 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022.
which gets most of its energy from fossil fuels, plans to funnel some US$40 billion into clean energy over the next several years.
The researchers behind the study say that biomass production for fuel or electricity generation will have the biggest impact on landscape and habitats.
Those other laws include the US renewable fuel standard, which requires that the volume of renewable fuel blended into gasoline is increased from 34 billion litres in 2008 to 136 billion litres by 2022.
That increase will require an area of between 19 and 31 million hectares the largest component of Mcdonald's projected energy sprawl
When completed, it will burn uranium fuel, producing electricity and a range of nuclear isotopes,
has not set a specific goal for cellulosic fuel. China has restricted maize-ethanol production and aims to produce 2. 5 billion additional litres of ethanol annually from non-food-grain sources by 2010.
Range Fuels based in Broomfield, Colorado, originally planned to complete the final phase of construction on a Georgia commercial plant in 2011
A Perspective published in Science in August noted that biomass-derived hydrocarbon fuels, such as petrol and diesel replacements, could be more attractive
people might move on to other fuels such as biobutanol or biomass-derived petrol, says Alexander. And the plant delays are giving alternative technologies a chance to catch up.
Nature Newsthe Obama administration released new automobile standards on Tuesday, proposing regulations that would curb greenhouse-gas emissions and ratchet up fuel-efficiency standards beginning in 2012.
the regulations would effectively increase fuel efficiency standards by nearly 40 percent, to more than 35.5 miles per gallon (about 15 kilometres per litre) in 2016.
The fuel efficiency standards, issued under the Department of transportation, are slightly less stringent and retain loopholes in the current regulatory system.
and to take extra credit for reduced gasoline consumption by'flex-fuel'vehicles, even though those vehicles seldom run on high-ethanol blends.
In addition to increasing overall fuel efficiency, automakers could improve their air-conditioning systems and opt for new chemical refrigerants that contribute less to global warming.
The genetic secrets of maize, one of the world's most widely grown grains, should accelerate efforts to develop improved crop varieties to meet the world's growing hunger for food, animal feed and fuel.
It also advocated cutting subsidies for environmentally harmful fossil fuels. See also page 277. Security screen: Five gene-synthesis companies in a new International Gene Synthesis Consortium have adopted practices that are intended to address the biosecurity risks of the technology.
or crop waste directly into fuel, filling gas tanks without raising global food prices or increasing hunger and deforestation in far-flung locales.
enabling them to convert precursor molecules directly into fuels and other chemicals. The team then inserted genes from other bacteria to produce enzymes able to break down hemicellulose.
The agency says that the Russian launch rocket that will carry Cryosat-2 into its required orbit did not have enough spare fuel in its second-stage engine.
Lei says as happened with the recent introduction of a fuel tax, which bypassed the NPC by being tagged onto the existing consumption-tax legislation.
%formally qualifying it as a'renewable fuel'for a federal mandate that requires the use of 136 billion litres of biofuels in 2022.
The mandate requires refiners to produce nearly 57 billion litres of renewable fuels by 2015.
Nature Newsthe burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil releases carbon dioxide that alters the balance of carbon isotopes naturally found in the environment an effect that is now being found in food,
the firm has engineered strains of yeast to produce hydrocarbon fuels and other chemicals from sugarcane feedstocks.
Nature Newspolicy Business Research Events People Business watch The week ahead Sound bites News maker Policy Fossil-fuel drilling:
Much of the current focus is on emissions from fossil fuels, which account for more than half of the global greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere annually,
Essentially all of the carbon in fossil fuels winds up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide after combustion,
and so carbon dioxide emissions can be calculated directly from a country's fuel consumption. Emission inventories from industrialized northern countries with reliable energy statistics have relatively small uncertainties
so to gain an accurate picture of the contribution of fossil-fuel burning, researchers are developing new tools to differentiate between'natural'and fossil-fuel carbon in the atmosphere.
One technique relies on the radioactive isotope carbon-14, which occurs in trace amounts in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
but fossil fuels have no carbon-14 because it has a relatively short half-life and they have been buried for millions of years.
researchers can work out how much of the carbon dioxide comes from the biosphere and how much from fossil-fuel emissions.
but to an episode three decades earlier and about 1, 000 kilometres south, at an exploratory oil well known as Ixtoc I, operated by Mexico's national petroleum company Petr  leos Mexicanos (PEMEX.
and fuel wood and in some cases to earn money from selling carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism established in 2001 as part of the Kyoto Protocol.
whose well-meaning efforts have poured only fuel on the fire. By this account engaging with the skeptics is pointless
says Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in WASHINGTON DC. Salo Zelermyer, who represents ethanol producers for the legal firm Bracewell
The mandated levels of biofuel production in the United states will increase to 53 billion litres in 2011 about 8%of the country's total fuel consumption
Cellulosic ethanol producers are trying to generate fuel from biomass such as leaves and branches. These feedstocks have the advantage that they are plentiful
For now they only affect the fuel efficiency of new vehicles and the issuing of permits for new industrial emitters of large amounts of carbon dioxide.
which could replace ethanol as a fuel additive, but which is used also to produce plastics and rubber.
Perchlorate interferes with the production of thyroid hormones and mainly leaches into the environment from its use in the manufacture of rocket fuel and explosives.
by eating the vegetation that forms potential fuel, and that ecologists have ignored mountain cattlemen's knowledge of the land.
but merely testing methods suitable for measuring the impact of cattle on fuels and on ecosystem functions.
as well as spent fuel pools, while, in parallel, developing techniques to store and decontaminate used water on the site.
and international organizations had pledged an extra ¢ 550 million (US$780 million) to help build a spent-fuel storage facility
and fuel-so that fewer trees need to be cut down. To be smart about using money to store carbon
In addition, free distribution of fuel-efficient stoves would decrease the need for charcoal. A Smart-REDD plan,
Trend watch The price of uranium oxide 墉 the raw material for uranium fuel 墉 climbed steadily last year after an earlier price collapse.
and fuel prices could easily favour the conversion of land for agriculture and other uses over forest conservation.
otherwise have used fossil fuels; investing in the development and operation of an energy-efficient rapid transit system in Delhi, India;
water will need still to be pumped into the reactors to cool their decaying fuel, and residents who once lived near the plant will not be able to return until the land has been decontaminated.
in theory, be engineered to produce a variety of other useful chemicals and fuels.""This is very impressive work it really is a groundbreaking achievement,
) Bilateral or multilateral agreements can help to pay for cleaner fuels and filters for diesel engines or promote policies that ban the burning of agricultural waste
owing to the complexity of assessing future technological changes for this and other fuels. But their calculations suggest that a full life-cycle analysis increases the overall emissions from oil sands by roughly 17%.
as enabling the development of a dirty fuel, and US President Barack Obama seemed to be catering to them
weighing heavily as policy-makers seek to create policies that promote cleaner fuels and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
whether to accept a proposed emissions value that would have banned effectively the fuel from being used in the EU. The lack of agreement means that the issue will now be passed to environment ministers,
In 2009, Europe introduced a Fuel Quality Directive that requires fuel suppliers to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from road fuels by 6%between 2010 and 2020.
and it is keen to export the fuel, via US refineries, to Europe. Canada is also in the midst of negotiating a free-trade agreement with the EU. Spain
which can be used to meet their fuel-quality target. Oil companies say that biofuels are the best way to meet the 6%emission-reduction goal.
and Environment in Brussels."All fuels need correct carbon accounting to count their contribution, to reach the 6%greenhouse-gas reduction target,
also said that it would not use its own microbe vats to produce synthetic fuels,
Large-scale acquisitions have increased since global food and oil crises in 2007. Many economists thought that the pressure would ease eventually
Canadian company Iogen Energy in Ottawa announced on 30 april that it has shelved plans to build a large-scale facility in Manitoba to produce fuel ethanol from cellulose, the long molecular chain of sugars that forms
Most fuel ethanol is made by fermenting the sugars in grains or sugar cane, but cellulosic ethanol can be made from municipal waste, wood chips, grass,
says Scott Thurlow, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association.""There is still lots of opportunity in Canada.
By contrast, the US Renewable Fuel Standard, part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, mandates the United states to produce increasing volumes of cellulosic biofuels each year, until it reaches a target of 60.5
For cellulosic biofuels to be competitive with fossil fuels, the price of oil must surpass US$120 per barrel,
20 26 july 2012fukushima work Workers on 18 Â July removed two unused fuel rods from the spent fuel pool of Fukushima Daiichi s unit 4 reactor.
but the stability of its fuel pool holding fresh as well as spent fuel rods has caused concern.
In January, after the US Environmental protection agency (EPA) found that palm-oil fuels emitted only 11-17%less greenhouse gas than diesel over their entire life cycle,
it suggested that the oil should not be classified as a renewable fuel. Although a public consultation on the matter concluded in April, the EPA has not set a date to issue its final ruling.
But the European union (EU) continues to encourage the use of fuels based on palm oil. The EU has a binding target to raise the share of biofuels used in road transport to 10%by 2020
and most of that is expected to be met by blending biofuels such as palm oil with conventional fuels.
say researchers who question the European commission's own studies into the fuel source. Europe s Renewable Energy Directive (RED),
and use of biofuels for transport be at least 35%lower than those from fossil fuels; thereafter, 50%lower.
delivering greenhouse-gas cuts of at least 38%compared with conventional fuels, making it eligible for blending in biodiesels.
and different efficiencies in fuel production. They also compared the biofuel emissions with values for fossil fuels used in the commission's calculations and others in the scientific literature.
In the scenario that most closely resembled the calculations run for the European commission, the team found greenhouse-gas savings of 29.7%for rapeseed, well below the commission's 38%estimate.
when compared to both the higher and lower fossil fuel GHG emissions values.""Saying that rapeseed is sustainable in every case,
Since taking office, electricity production from wind and solar sources has doubled already more than in the United states. We are boosting our use of cleaner fuels,
and implementing a new Renewable Fuel Standard that will save nearly 14 billion gallons of petroleum-based gasoline in 2022.
and concerns that biofuels may produce greater greenhouse-gas emissions than fossil fuels (see Nature http://doi. org/bmssn7;
) The proposals retain a target that 10%of transport fuels should come from renewable sources by 2020 but set a 5%cap on food-based biofuels.
Growth of ethanol fuel stalls in Brazil"A new moment for mankind. That was how Brazil s former president, Luiz In ¡
Back then, Brazil was the poster child of ethanol fuel, its output second only to that of the United states. Fermenting the sugars in the country s abundant sugar cane produced a motor fuel that lowered carbon dioxide emissions,
The price of pure ethanol at the pump is so high that in most states it is cheaper to fill up flexible-fuel cars with petrol blends that contain about 20%ethanol.
The shift back to fossil fuels, combined with rapid growth in the number of cars on the roads (see Fuelling Brazil s transport boom),
of which promised to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies the government said it would be reducing a federal fuel tax to zero."
Vehicles are classified by the type of fuel used and emissions produced, and are simulated moving throughout the city
Woo explains that the survey is modelled on a two-year health investigation that followed a 1987 leak at an oil refinery in Texas,
and developing new fossil-fuel reserves, according to Carbon Tracker, even though burning them would cause a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. 24-25 april On World Malaria Day (25 april),
Some originate from the burning of fuel or the processing of electronic waste, and others are used widely as pesticides or herbicides or in the manufacture of solvents, plastics and pharmaceuticals.
but on average it soaks up one-quarter of the annual CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
But Brazil has turned increasingly to fossil fuels to drive an ever larger share of its economic growth in recent years.
Politicians moved to limit food-based fuels to 5. 5%of transport fuel by 2020,
after scientists warned that production of some biofuels drives land clearance that can lead to greater greenhouse-gas emissions than from fossil fuel (see Nature 499,13-14;
) Fuel suppliers would also have to report emissions due to changes in land use. The European parliament votes on the issue in September.
EU debates U-turn on biofuels policythe European union (EU) has spent the past 10 years nurturing a  15-billion (US$20-billion) industry that makes transport fuel from food crops such as soya beans
Yet for more than half a decade, scientists have warned that many food-based fuels might actually be boosting emissions relative to fossil fuels.
require a 6%drop in the carbon footprint of transport fuel by 2020, by which time renewable energy must fuel 10%of the transport sector.
Biofuel counts towards that requirement if it produces a 35%emissions saving over fossil fuels, or 50%from 2017 onwards;
so far, most of that fuel has come from food crops, helping to generate a thriving bio  fuels industry based mainly on biodiesel.
Europe is even importing rapeseed and vegetable oil to meet demand. But the original accounting for biofuel emissions was all wrong,
most varieties of biodiesel turn out to produce more emissions than bioethanol and often more than fossil fuels.
when it set standards for which fuels count as renewable. Luckily for US farmers ethanol from maize (corn) the main biofuel for US vehicles was given the green light under the agency s rules.
In October 2012, the commission finally proposed that food-crop fuel quotas be capped at only 5%of transport fuel by 2020 half of the 10%renewables target effectively allowing existing facilities to continue recouping investment,
But fuel suppliers would have to start including land-use figures produced by the IFPRI when they report the total emissions of their fuels,
a hint that the official carbon footprint of Europe s transport fuel might eventually incorporate that science.
On 20 Â June, its energy committee voted to push the cap on food-crop fuels up slightly,
to 6. 5%.It also removed the stipulation that fuel suppliers report emissions using land-use change figures.
US power plants Regulations proposed on 20 Â September by the US Environmental protection agency would limit carbon dioxide emissions for future fossil-fuel power plants in the United states. To meet the emissions limits,
which conservationists say is a highly polluting way of extracting fossil fuels must end if the Canadian government is to face up to the massive problems the planet faces due to climate change.
"We have to carry our fuel with us, says Saatchi.""And we have limited only areas where it s safe to land.
On 18 Â November, the Tokyo Power and Electric Corporation began the delicate task of removing fuel rods from a damaged reactor building.
falling debris from the accident had made it difficult to transfer spent fuel kept in the building to permanent storage.
dried grasses and other indigestible plant matter could greatly improve the efficiency of converting waste biomass to fuel.
Producers of cellulosic ethanol currently spend 15-20%of their fuel costs on acids and enzymes to loosen
has worked with the liquid for years as a potential fuel in its own right, and a University of Wisconsin spin-off firm, Glucan Biorenewables, is already using GVL to make furans, a different kind of biofuel.
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