4 Degree Hotter World: Job opportunity for engineers!

The news on the risk of 4 digree hotter climate is now circulating in the world. It is in parallel to many disappointing news and prognosis on deicing north pole, increasing level of sea water, more rain in part of the world and dryness of other parts, more floods,....

However, it means at the same time a great job opportunities for engineers and researchers to come with new ideas and projects on  renewable energies and materials, resource recovery, construction projects, energy saving, more robust agriculture and cultivation methods, flood prevention, recycling materials,....

So to be realistic, all these disasters and bad news make a signal to invest on more engineers and a great job opportunities for those who are working in this field!

 

Major challenges of future generation!

I watched recently again the program by BBC (David Attenborough) about the capacity of planet earth. Although the program is from three years ago, the subject is getting more and more interesting. We are using simply about 50% more resources than the capacity of our planet. We have two major problems that are energy and water. Considering the increasing in population, decreasing in supply of resources and improving the global wellfare and life styles, and more consumption, we have major challenges in the future. Considering the life styles of American, the planet has the capacity of no more than 2,5 billion people, while with the current Indian life style, the planet has the capacity of 15 billion people. However, the trend for the Indian is to move toward the Americal style, and not the vice versa. It is at least a dream of many Indians.

If we want to be realistic and not idealist, we should encourage our students, teenagers and young brains to find some solutions to recycle resources, e.g. water, energy and materials! It is the main challenge of the future generation!

Costs of global warming: 5 trillion USD

I read yesterday on The Independent, quoting Dr. Keywan Riahi that the costs of delaying in actions against global warming is already estimated as 5,000,000,000,000 USD, which is 25% higher that the previous prognosis. As it is further delayed, we should expect more costs. However, it seems the politicians are ready to pay for the natural disasters, but not ready to pay anything to stop it.

In another news, we see that 30-50% of the foods are wasted in different steps of its processing from harvesting the agricultural products until its end usage. Its prognosis point to about 2,000,000,000 tons materials.

If we consider just these two news, we can roughly calculate the potential of producing fuels (such as biogas) for about 200 billion liters of gasoline or kerosene from this food materials that is wasted. This amount is equal to about 15% of the global gasoline market. This simple calculation shows the huge potential of our current resources for avoiding global warming. However, we have to wake up!

Music and fashion from wastes!

We usually hear engineers talk about the wastes, as they focus on engineering aspects, technologies, etc. However, it is intersting to see intiation of some people who develop arts and beauty from wastes!

Sometimes ago, I saw a friend in São Paulo University in Brazil (Prof Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos) who work with scavengers and many students, and show many beautiful clothes and materials from wastes, (such as this beautiful cloths in the picture down here). Another aspects I saw was in Indonesia in a project named Clean & Green, in which dirty parts of the cities were converted to beautiful parts and made such as bags or hats.

!!!I wish you all a Happy New Year of 2013!!!!

Now, we see another initiation in Paraguay, where people made different insturments from wastes and played Mozart. Very intresting!!

 (Cloths made from wastes in São Paulo University, photo borrowed from Prof Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos)

(Different handycrafts from wastes. Photo by Agus Prasetya from Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia)

(Playing Mozart by instuments made from rubish)

How to find a position as PhD student?

I reguarly get questions from students who are looking for a position as PhD student. Here are some hints for those applicants:
1- The positions as PhD stundents are very limited compared to the number of MSc students. So, if you apply and get a negative answer, you are not alone. Do not give up!
2- The financing is usually a major crerion. If you have financing from e.g. your home country, a ministry, a company etc., it would be easier to find a position. However, if you apply for the positions with salary or scholarship, you have to compete with the other students, which make it much more difficult.
3- Try to contact the professors whom you are interesting to work with. You should avoid general e-mails, since nobody answer.
4- Try to make personal contacts with those professors in e.g. conferences, workshops etc., even if you have to go abroad for such conferences and pay for it.
5- One major merit in selecting the students is to have publications (in scientific journals). You should work hard to do some good work in e.g. your MSc thesis and try to publish it. It increases the chances to find a position.
6- Many MScs try to study another MSc again, in order to get in touch with some peoples and increase their changes. It sometimes works!
7- The grades in your MSc and even BSc are important.
8- The social parts and teamwork are also important to get a position. Do not understimate it!
9- Try to get a good references. The reference letters that are handed over to the applicants are usually useless, since all of the are positive and not real!

Think about these facts and good luck in finding a position!

Prepare yourself for more natural disasters!

It is very disappointing news from Doha (Qatar) that the polititions in the world cannot do more than just prolonging Kyoto Protocol. The level of carbon dioxide is now more than 390 ppm (just notice that it has been generally around 200 to 300 ppm in the last 400,000 years.

The polititions just care about their daily work and perhaps just re-elected and have no possibility to do a longterm investment on the environmental issues. So, people should think about themselves and prepare for:
- Less rain in dried regions, but flood when it rains,
- More rains in the is already too much rain,
- More extreme weather (too cold or too hot),
- More release of methane in the atmosphere (and consequently more global warming),
- Higher level of water (for those who live on the coastal area and also harbors),
- More and stronger storms and tornados,
- Chaning in the Gulf streams (water movement between the poles and equators) and more anaerobic conditions at the bottoms of oceans and seas and less oxygen in the water,
- .....

It is probably the myth of 2012, if you believe in it!

India: zero waste with music and religion?

We had a trip last week to India and had good meetings with several municipalities, companies and universities about zero wastes concept, and conversion of wastes to a variety of energies, fuels and materials as what we do here in Sweden. I hope it leads to some concrete developments in the country.

However, I think India is a very complicated country with many challenges. There is wide span of rich-middle class-poor people, as well as on the education. We see expensive cars on the street, while still many people depend on elephants and camels for transportation. While air-condition is normal in many buildings that I visited, still 44% of the rural area do not have access to electricity.

The questions on wastes and energy are also hot topic in the country. India is in some kinds of transient conditions from the old traditions (where no everything was somehow sustainable) to a consuming society with perhaps American style of life as the model. They should consume more in order to show they belong to a higher class. It results in a lot of wastes (as I heard 1.3 kg/capita/day that is almost similar to Sweden) and also lack of energy (as I heard just one state has surplus of electricity production and the rest have problem with it). There are a lot of plans on waste management, but in principle, the wastes are transported to the landfills and dumping places.

One key factor in Sweden on a proper waste management and achieving zero landfill is the wastes segregation at the source as people do it as home. When we talked about it, there were people who were very pessimistic and said it can never happen in India. However, Indians love dance and music and they are generally very religious. Their home is clean and their temples are also clean, as we have to take out shoes before entering the temples or mosques. Just they need little social works to start with music and beautiful dancers to sing and dance for zero wastes and also their religious leaders to show them that the streets should also be clean as their home and temples are! Let's see if we get some results out of it!

Global CO2 emissions 2011: Made in China

In 2011, the global CO2 emission has been increased by more than 800 million tons to 34 billion tons. This level can be compared to 22,682 million tons in 1990. It means that just in 22 years, we have increased our CO2 emissions by 50%!!!!

USA is no longer the dominating country in CO2 emission, where China "as they call themselves as the world fabric"got the first rank with 8,876 million tons emissions. Comparing the countries are interesting in different aspects. Sweden produces 56 million tons, while indsutrial and cold country as Canada (with 3 times more population than Sweden) produces 628 million tons. Another countries are Iran and Saudi Arabia that are not developed country, but their emissions are more than United Kingdom. 

Biofuels in Europe: Ethics or...?

European Union is now going to reduce its target to use food-based renewable energy and limit it to 5% in 2020. In the last few years, a great effort has been to produce ethanol, biogas and biodiesel from food-based vegetables such as grains in Europe. However, whenever a crisis appears, debates on producing such biofuels pops up. However, not all the aspects are usually discussed:

• Is it ok to take the food from a poor african child and make it as fuel for a rich European?
• Is it ok to use water in relatively dry countries to produce fuel for reach European cars?
• Is it ok to use the arable lands to produce biofuels and not food for the billions of hungry mouths?

There are many of such questions, which of course we should say NO!
But, there are some other questions as well:

• What a poor farmer does, when there is an overproduction of the grains in a region or a year? Should he sell it in low price?
• Why shouldn't we develop unused lands, and unemployed people in some regions or countries to cultivate grains and produce biofuels?

As example, there are now about 7,000 farm-based biogas plants in Germany, and about 600,000 tons excess grains in Sweden. What should these farmers do? Should we stop their farms and import more oil and gas from Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia? Is it sustainable?

  

Sustainability: A complex question!

I have recently watched a documentary film "The Magical Forest" on YouTube from BBC documentary, and I recommend everybody working on biofuel and bioenergy to watch this film. It shows how different species such as salmon fishes, bears, flying squirrels, fungi, catterpillar, etc. have imporant functions for a nordic forest to survive. It is usally hard to imagine that a lot of nutients for the trees in a forest come from the ocean by salmon, or the squirrels help the trees to obtain water during the dry season.

It shows perfectly that nature has a very complex balance, that is not so easy to predict all the aspects. For example, dams and hydropowers are probably the best way of producing electricity. However, it can damage the Amazon forests as mentioned before, or damage the nordic forests by stopping the nutrients that should come from the ocean by salmon fishes. These aspects are not so often considered and are not highlighted in media. We should also think about such aspects of other lovely bioenergies such as wind power, solar power, biogas, ethanol, biodiesel, etc., and also the fossil fuels such as oil, gas, tar sand, nuclear plants. All the discussions are usually limited to CO2 or some other simple aspects that are easy to measure, but the question is much more complex!!!

(The Magical forest by BBC documentary)