I’ve got one more tidbit from last weekend’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and it’s nothing less than a new scientific concept: telecoupling.
This is not, as you might expect, a particular risqué form of conference call. Telecoupling refers to how connections between nature and human …
I’m in DC for the AAAS annual meeting, and while this gathering of the world’s smartest people (and the journalists who write about them) is big news in the science world, the real action is a few blocks away at the Capitol. There Democrats and Republicans are in a knife fight over the budget—and just as much, who can sound tougher …
Even if you love nuclear power (gee whiz, it’s carbon free!), you have to admit there’s a problem with using the energy that binds atoms as a source to power cities: nuclear waste. Fission produces isotopes that remain radioactive for thousands of years. And no one wants the waste anywhere near them. In December, the U.S. …
The University of Michigan’s mascot is the wolverine—a pretty good symbol for teams that want to terrify their foes. Real wolverines are the largest members of the weasel family, about as big as a medium-size dog, with a reputation for strength and ferocity.
But there aren’t any wolverines left in the Wolverine State. The last …
Vice President Joe Biden earned the nickname “Amtrak Joe” not because he used to hop the rails hobo-style in his youth—that would be the Onion version of the Veep—but because he made over 7,900 commuting trips on Amtrak between Washington and his home in Wilmington during his 26-year career in the Senate. Logically, the White …
The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a report this week that food prices reached an all-time high in January. The Food Price Index rose 3.4% in January to 231, surpassing June 2008 levels that sparked food riots and hoarding from Haiti to the Philippines. Prices of all commodity groups except meat — cereals, …
How much is nature worth? On one hand, the question seems absurd. Is it possible to put a price on the value of an endangered species? Or figure out the dollar worth of a clean river, or uncontaminated air. Environmentalism—at least its more romantic strain—has largely defined itself in opposition to the naked market, where …
I’m in Abu Dhabi right now, attending the World Future Energy Summit and getting a chance to check out the first finished buildings in Masdar City. I’ll have more on the summit and the city tomorrow, but I wanted to focus on something else today. I often write on this blog about rapidly the planet has developed over the past few decades, …
China announced via its state-run media yesterday that more nuclear power plants will be built during the nation’s next Five Year Plan, from 2011-2015. It’s not exactly new news, per se, as it’s been well known that China’s nuclear power sector has been expanding for some time in concert with the nation’s goal to generate 15% …
A report by a British parliamentary committee looking into the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster warned on Tuesday that Britain is not ready to handle a spill of the kind suffered by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, but found that a moratorium on drilling around British coasts was unnecessary because British safety standards are “superior to …
