Sometimes reality really is just so much stranger than fiction. In a plan that can only be described of as “strange”, the world could possibly be made a lot greener … by nuking stray camels in Australia.

According to calculations offered by Tim Moore, managing director of Aussie green machine Northwest Carbon, the proposal is to sell government carbon credits issued for killing camels wandering the desolate regions of Australia. The camels were introduced in the 19th century as beasts of burden well suited to the desert climates in Australia. As such things go, the camels of course escaped their human masters, bred all on their own, and now belch and fart a considerable amount of methane into the atmosphere whilst providing no discernable benefit to anyone.

Methane, being a considerably more potent greenhouse gas, has been much the debate in other animals, such as cattle. But whereas cattle are needed for food, wild camels offer no such boon as burger-fodder. In fact, in the past, these wild camels of Australia have even rampaged the outback town of Docker River during 2009 in a search for water. So eliminating these nuisance animals not only prevents their greenhouse gas emissions, but also gets rid of them as pests.

Just how gassy is a camel? The estimation is that a single camel will release approximately 100lbs (45kg) of methane per year. Over the average 40-year lifespan of a camel, that would account for 4000lbs, which is 2 tons worth of methane gas. Assume that you kill the camel around middle age, and that’s still an average of 1 ton of methane release saved for each camel killed. And methane, being over 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, would make the death of a single camel equivalent savings of around 20 tons of CO2, or basically a ton of CO2 per year for the next 20 years.

Theoretically.

The actual Australian math comes out to only 15 metric tons (tonnes) of carbon emission equivalency. And, honestly, how do you really prove any of this definitively?

But allegations of mathematical inanity aside, the business proposal suggests that sales from the carbon credits alone would likely pay for the scheme to hunt these wild camels down by off-road vehicle or even helicopter, and that further monies could be realized in the pet-food industry by processing the carcasses. Assuming your Australian dog or cat enjoys Camel Crispies. Or there’s always glue…

Of course the Australian government isn’t yet convinced of “Management of large feral herbivores (camels) in the Australian rangelands” proposal. Further research will need to be done before they approve the eligibility of this carbon farming initiative.

But, you know, I say that they just haven’t taken this proposal quite far enough. If you really want to turn it into a profitable business, then whip up some Predator drone knockoffs, connect their controls through the internet, and then let people around the world Camel Hunt for $9.95 a minute. Or something as equally vile as the camels themselves. The horrible puns could go on into much more vulgar suggestions, but as this is a (semi) professional blog, I’ll leave those to your own imagination.

Meanwhile, I guess we should be happy that no one is suggesting the clubbing of baby seals or the nuking of whales as a means of saving the planet from the rampages of humanity’s carbon (and methane) emissions.

Some German and Australian scientists have been working on a project to revolutionize renewable resources.  They have found a way to make synthetic “natural gas” from carbon dioxide (CO2), water, and electricity, much in the same way hydrogen can be produced from water.  Dr Michael Specht of the Zentrum für Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff-Forschung (Solar energy and Waterstuff [Hydrogen] Research center – ZSW) explains:

“Our demonstration system in Stuttgart splits water using electrolysis. The result is hydrogen and oxygen.  A chemical reaction of hydrogen with carbon dioxide generates methane – and that is nothing other than natural gas, produced synthetically.”

And the process they currently use will supposedly will scale up remarkably well.  Plans are to create a double-digit megawatt-range unit by 2012 to prove that it really can be done, and to provide homes with synthetic natural gas.

Brilliant!

Err … maybe.

The thought behind it is that electricity is a somewhat wasteful system as during lulls in usage the generation has no useful way to store large amounts of energy for when the peak usage times hit.  This is especially a hindrance to renewable green sources of electricity like wind and solar where peaks of energy production rely upon the timetable of Mother Nature and not upon peak usages by mankind.  Where as converting electricity into natural gas allows one to store a lot of energy created during lulls to take the load off during peaks.

Colleague Dr Michael Sterner explains, “Surplus wind and solar energy can be stored in this manner. During times of high wind speeds, wind turbines generate more power than is currently needed. This surplus energy is being more frequently reflected at the power exchange market through negative electricity prices.”

Plus there are other theoretical benefits, like the ability to modify vehicles to run on Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) which is just a compressed form of natural gas that turns it from a gaseous state to a liquid state.

Which is all well and good.  In theory.

One might want to remind the world that we can however already do this with hydrogen.

And then there’s the conversion efficiency, which is only 60% efficient.  Where as processes like just pumping water up higher into a dam to store as potential energy for a hydroelectric plant are more than 70% efficient.

But the largest concern would be that according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methane gas has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 21, meaning that methane is twenty one times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2).  So while proponents of synthetic  natural gas try to tell you that their methods are carbon-neutral, thus not harming our environment any more than it is saving it, this is not necessarily the case.  Any of their synthetic natural gas going up up and away is far more damaging to the environment than CO2.  Where as hydrogen isn’t.

But then one of the main problems with hydrogen is that, being the smallest atom, it escapes easily from systems that try to hold or transport it.  Where as methane, a much larger molecule, has no such problems.

So then, is it really such a great idea?  Yes, potentially, it holds a lot of interesting promise.  But then so does generating hydrogen from electrolysis.  Where as, potentially, it also holds a number of potential concerns, where as generating hydrogen from electrolysis doesn’t.

It’s certainly something to think about, and goes to show that when we put our heads to it, we can come up with all manner of interesting solutions to any problem.  And that it is likely a combination of efforts that will solve the world’s woes and not any one singular invention or ingenuity.

The doner kebab pot noodle is most certainly a dangerous sign of the end of the world.  But zombies aren’t the only way that the world can end.

Oh no.

There are also … cows!

You might think that I’m joking, but actually, it’s quite a serious concern.  Cows are bred far and wide in great numbers across the world for food and milk.  But cows by far produce the most methane per pound.  Their flatulence is positively loaded with methane.  Methane is a greenhouse gas approximately twenty times more potent at locking in the sun’s heat than the carbon dioxide we all fear.  So cows aren’t just hamburger.  They’re a recipe for disaster!  Our very demand for hamburgers could be our undoing.

But rest assured, top scientists are on the case.

Dr. Lorraine Lillis of University College Dublin and her cadre of bio-scientists in Ireland have made a discovery that may well lead to a feasible solution.  By altering a bovine’s diet with added fish oil heavy in omega-3 fatty acids, the bacteria in cows that produce methane are affected, to the tune of a reduction of methane production by twenty one per cent.

“The fish oil affects the methane-producing bacteria in the rumen part of the cow’s gut, leading to reduced emissions,” says Dr. Lillis.  “Understanding which microbial species are particularly influenced by changes in diet and relating them to methane production could bring about a more targeted approach to reducing methane emissions in animals.”

So obviously 21% is only a start.  Just as clearly it would be darned expensive to give all cows across the world a diet loaded with fish oil.  That, itself, isn’t really the point.

The point of the study by Dr. Lillis is that with a better understanding of the microbiological occurances that go on in a cow’s gut, we could very well devise low-cost dietary changes for our beloved bovines that could dramatically reduce their methane production that is impacting global warming.

Better food for cows could very well prevent a Cowpocalypse.  And then we could eat all of the hamburgers we want.

If there’s one major failing in electric cars, it’s their batteries. They recharge in hours, and who, really, wants that? The standard battery used is not the normal lead acid battery used in automobiles, but the more rechargeable lithium-ion battery as is typically used in laptops, cellphones, etc.  But let’s face it, even though the lithium-ion battery is fine for your portable electronics, it’s too slow to recharge for automotive use.  Because of this, researchers are looking at some new options:

Option 1 – Hydrogen Fuel Cells:

The hydrogen fuel cell is in a lot of ways like a battery.  The essential purpose is to get out electricity.  However, where as batteries essentially trap electricity in a complex chemical balance that always leaves the battery physically full of the same amount of chemicals, a fuel cell basically breaks down its chemicals as fuel, growing more and more physically empty as it produces electricity.  Typically the chemicals / fuel used in a fuel cell is hydrogen, although theoretically other fuels could be used to produce electricity as well.  And as the hydrogen depletes and turns into electricity, it also creates a waste product: water.  While creating water is by no means harmful, and might work just fine in a car, it’s a little harder to imagine this being a useful concept in laptops or cellphones.

The distinct advantage of the hydrogen fuel cell in automobiles is one simple thing: rechargeability.  Where the typical battery takes hours to recharge, to “recharge” a fuel cell takes mere seconds.  All that you do to recharge a fuel cell is literally just top off its fuel.  Fill the hydrogen fuel cell with more hydrogen, and it’s good to go another couple hundred miles, just like topping a regular car off with gas.  It’s a concept that automobile drivers know and understand quite well.  So it’s no wonder that this is a much preferred method to plugging in a car and waiting for hours.

But hydrogen comes at a cost.  That cost is, you have to produce it.  The “cleanest” method of producing hydrogen is from water, using electricity to break water into its components: hydrogen and oxygen.  Okay, so as long as your electricity comes from something nice and clean like solar, hydroelectric, or geothermal you’re clean.  But if that electricity comes from something less than stellar, like coal, it can in fact make your nice “green” hydrogen so very not green.

Then there’s the other method of hydrogen production that green-lovers don’t like to mention: from hydrocarbons.  Instead of using electrolysis to create hydrogen from water, you generate it from natural gas, releasing the dreaded CO2 – carbon dioxide – in the process.  With about an 80% efficiency.

There’s also a theoretical third method to produce hydrogen which has yet to be proven effective in large quantities, which is using algae to produce hydrogen.  By depriving certain algae of sulfur, it changes their normal photosynthesis process from producing oxygen into producing hydrogen.  While nifty and about as green as you can get, it unfortunately is a very tricky process to do in anything larger than a test tube.  So, as of yet, isn’t really an option.

And if the means of producing hydrogen weren’t questionable enough as a means of fighting the evils of pollution and CO2 greenhouse gasses, there’s also the question of how to get it to the “gas station”.  Like any fuel, to transport it is to reduce its efficiency because you have to burn fuel to get the fuel to the consumer.  So transporting hydrogen makes it less green.  The other option is to eliminate transport overhead by producing the hydrogen on-site … which would typically require a significant boost to any fueling station’s electrical backbone to handle the electrolysis of converting water into hydrogen.  It’s quite possible to do, and economically feasible if the world all one day drives hydrogen vehicles, but is financially costly while hydrogen vehicles are rarely used.  And, the bigger question would be, if we can expand the electrical systems of gas stations everywhere with higher amperage to produce hydrogen on-site, then why can’t we just expand the electrical systems the exact same way to recharge cars in minutes instead of hours, thereby completely negating the whole purpose of hydrogen fuel cells as battery replacements in the first place?

Option 2 – Enhance Lithium-Ion Batteries With Lithium-Phosphate Glass:

Lithium-ion batteries are highly rechargeable batteries used in almost anything that doesn’t use the standard AAA, AA, C, D, 9V replaceable batteries.  They’re handy, but slow to recharge, taking hours.  But wait…  What’s this?  It’s big news!  Just recently MIT’s Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder have found a way to rapidly increase the energy transfer of the lithium ion battery by using lithium-phosphate glass.  What took hours might now be down to seconds.

At least in a lab.

Though while there seems to be a lot of excitement over the concept, there are also some who are more reserved, noting that so far all they’ve really proved is that they can discharge a lithium-ion battery quicky.  Whether or not it can recharge quickly remains to be seen.  So far it’s all a lot of excited hypothetical and theoretical green-geek mosh-pitting.  When (or even if) it will be commercially available remains to be seen.  But, if at all possible, it could easily revolutionize the entire battery world by making lithium-ion batters rechargeable in a tiny fraction of the time that it used to take, completely negating any need for fuel cell technologies.

Option 3 – Enhance Lithium-Ion Batteries With Lithium-Tritanate Anodes:

Lithium-ion batteries typically use graphite anodes.  Altair Nanotechnology found that by using lithium-tritanate anodes instead gives you a battery that recharges in minutes instead of hours, and that has operating temperatures much better suited to automobiles.  They trademarked this battery technology NanoSafe.  And so far, there has been very little actual excitement about these batteries.  Perhaps it is because these batteries could negate the whole purpose of the hydrogen fuel cell by being a battery that can recharge in about the same time that it takes to refuel a fuel cell?  Or maybe I’m just being pessimistic.  But whichever the case, here we have a proven battery technology, marketed today, that could very well make the electric car quite usable by the majority of the world.  All with a minimal change to any gas-station infrastructure.  And did I mention, these batteries are available, right now?

Conclusion:

While it remains to be seen whether or not the electric car’s superbattery will be a hydrogen fuel cell or enhancements to lithium-ion batteries, one thing is for certain:  The race is on! With the right funding to establish the necessary support, the use of petrolium-based gasoline, or even the need for greener biofuels, could be completely eliminated by simply using electricity.  And so long as the electricity comes from the greenest sources, it could severely reduce or even completely negate the production of carbon dioxide to move people and cargo from Point A to Point B … at least on the ground.  On the air and in the sea are still matters best left for the future.