carbon emissions

Even before a single ounce of natural gas gets burned in a home or power plant, massive amounts of CO2 have already been released. The process of extracting natural gas releases carbon dioxide pent up in the same wells as the gas, thus adding to the climate-changing impact of the fuel.

To help lower the global warming impact of one of the world's largest natural gas fields, General Electric has supplied Chevron, Exxon Mobile and Shell with enough compression "trains"--the pumps and turbines that do the sequestering--to create the world's largest carbon sequestration project. The trains will pump 3.3 million tons of CO2 released from natural gas mining back into the ground every year. That's the equivalent of taking 630,000 cars off the road.

Wow - Panasonic just threw down a massive gauntlet. They just wheeled out on stage a 150-inch plasma. That's 42 inches bigger than the last record-holder (Sharp's 108-inch LCD), or like nine 50-inch TVs. The resolution is 2k by 4k, or four times today's highest high definition. No word on price, but I'd go buy a couple of lottery tickets today.

More from the Panasonic press conference after the jump.

Federal scientists released some of the annual average temperature data for 2007, revealing that this year registers as the eighth warmest since 1895, when records were first kept. The average temperature was 54.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the U.S. Worldwide, that number is slightly higher, and the preliminary details of the annual report suggest that 2007 was the fifth warmest year on a global scale. Seven of the eight warmest years have occurred since 2001. Armed with ever more convincing data, not to mention projections that suggest how grave events could become in the future should our current practices continue, scientists are also suggesting that we not only make a greater effort to cut carbon emissions, but work harder to remove existing carbon from the air.—Gregory Mone