Pecologix Political Ecology Blotter

The key finding is that new residential heating systems fuelled by LPG are 20% lower carbon and 15% lower overall-environmental-impact than those fuelled by heating oil. An unexpected finding was that an LPG system’s environmental impact is about the same as that of a bio heating oil system fuelled by 100% rapeseed methyl ester, Europe’s [...]

Previous studies on the life-cycle environmental impacts of corn ethanol and gasoline focused almost exclusively on energy balance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and largely overlooked the influence of regional differences in agricultural practices. This study compares the environmental impact of gasoline and E85 taking into consideration 12 different environmental impacts and regional differences among [...]

Although laboratory experiments have shown that organic compounds in both gasoline fuel and diesel engine exhaust can form secondary organic aerosol (SOA), the fractional contribution from gasoline and diesel exhaust emissions to ambient SOA in urban environments is poorly known. Here we use airborne and ground-based measurements of organic aerosol (OA) in the Los Angeles [...]

After a year-long process of peer review, the DEMS scientists recently turned over to industry and others copies of two major papers they planned to publish in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The mining coalition made no official reply, but in mid-February, as the 90-day waiting period began to wane, Henry Chajet, a [...]

A potential strategy for tackling the negative environmental impact of conventional plastics is to produce them from renewable resources. However, such a strategy needs to be assessed quantitatively, by life cycle assessment (LCA) for example.This screening LCA is intended to identify key aspects that influence the environmental impact of sugarcane low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and compare [...]

Improving engine efficiency and reducing pollutant emissions are extremely important. Here, we report our fuel injection technology based on the new physics principle that proper application of electrorheology can reduce the viscosity of petroleum fuels. A small device is thus introduced just before the fuel injection for the engine, producing a strong electric field to [...]

The objective of this study is to develop a forecasting model to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy than the existing models. Even though our approach originates from Hubbert model, it overcomes the limitations and restrictions associated with the original Hubbert model. As opposed to Hubbert single-cycle model, our model has more than [...]