It’s Presidents’ Day as I write this, so if you were lucky enough to have the day off, give some thanks to Washington, Lincoln and all the other chief executives — even stinkers like James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. Of course …
EcocentricOil
EcocentricOil
EcocentricPolitics
Climate Expert Peter Gleick Admits Deception in Obtaining Heartland Institute Papers
Last week the climate world was rocked — or at least, strongly buffeted — by the publication of memos that were allegedly from the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research group that takes a strongly skeptical attitude toward climate science. The memos detailed budget information — including news that groups like the …
EcocentricOil
Pipeline Politics: Are the Oil Sands “Game Over” for the Climate? One Study Says No
There are no shortage of reasons why the Keystone XL pipeline has become such a hot button issue for environmentalists. Many worry about the risks the project could pose to the Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska, where the pipeline was …
EcocentricNatural Gas
Shale Gas: It’s Not the Fracking That Might Be the Problem. It’s Everything Else
If you were trying to invent with a term that sounds as scary as possible, you couldn’t do better than “fracking.” That’s industry terminology for hydraulic fracturing, the process used to get at unconventional natural gas and …
EcocentricEcocentric
Climate Action: Stopping Global Warming Through the Back Door
Real talk: when it comes to dealing with climate change—and reducing carbon emissions, the top man-made cause of warming—the international community is doing a crap job. The U.N. process is bogged down, with ambitions that …
EcocentricOil
Pipeline Politics: Keystone, Advocates and Analysts
If there were any doubt that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline—which would bring more than 700,000 barrels a day of Canadian oils sands through the Midwest to refineries in the U.S.—has become the biggest environmental issue …
EcocentricEnergy
Bright Days: How India Is Reinventing Solar
In 2009, when policymakers in New Delhi set a goal to produce 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020, few gave India more than a slim chance. The world’s solar-savvy countries put together were generating that much solar …
EcocentricGreen Building
How Smart Paint Saves Bridges
There’s a lot to love about bridges: they’re practical, beautiful and connect communities that might otherwise be a lot less accessible (think Manhattan with only ferries). But bridges also have a nasty habit of falling …
EcocentricResearch
Drill, Baby, Drill: Russian Scientists Reach a Massive Underground Lake
If life were a Michael Bay movie, the moment this week when Russian scientists finally drilled into the subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica would immediately be followed by the sudden and frightening appearance of unfrozen …
EcocentricEnergy
Island Blues: A Caribbean Country’s Troubled Experiment with Geothermal Power
St. Kitts and Nevis, with a population of just over 50,000 and covering a mere 100 sq. mi. — one and a half times the size of Washington, D.C. — is the smallest sovereign nation, by size and population, in the Americas. The …