EcocentricOil
For retired Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, Osama bin Laden’s death was personal. McGinn was working at the Pentagon on 9/11, and his office was just 50 yards away from the spot where the hijacked plane eventually crashed. Had he not recently moved into an office with shatterproof glass, McGinn might have ended up as one of the more …
EcocentricHealth
Cross posted from Healthland:
Endocrine disruption, diabetes, obesity—to the list of ills potentially associated with exposure to the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), you can add one more: childhood asthma. In a new study presented over the weekend at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver, researchers from the …
EcocentricEcocentric
Late last week I sat down with former Vice President Al Gore in the New York offices of his firm Generation Investments to talk about the iPad/iPhone-app version of his recent climate and energy book Our Choice. The app—the first multimedia version of an existing book that I’m aware of—really is amazing, with geolocated photos, film …
EcocentricOil
It can happen to any journalist—major news happens, but not on your beat. What do you do? You look for any entry point you can. But we don’t have to stretch too far to examine the implications that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s death might have on global energy markets—and especially oil. Born and raised in the petroleum cradle …
EcocentricWildlife
The last place you’d expect to see the folks from CSI sleuthing around is the bowl of soup you’re having for lunch — unless, of course, you’re having shark fin soup. In that case, you may be enabling an environmental crime, and now there’s DNA evidence that can give you away.
People who grew up on shark fin soup insist the stuff is …
EcocentricWeather
The South is reeling from what could be one of the deadliest tornado systems in U.S. history. Yesterday storms and tornadoes ripped through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia, killing as many as 200 people, and potentially far more. At least 139 separate tornadoes were reported yesterday. That number is almost certain …
EcocentricWind Power
An interesting debate showed up in my Twitter feed today. A few followers of China’s green energy policies have taken climate skeptic Bjorn Lomborg’s recent opinion piece in the Washington Post to task for using some information that undersells what China has accomplished.
I hadn’t read Lomborg’s article, which ran on April …
EcocentricHealth
Crossposted from Healthland:
It can sometimes seem that we spend most of our journalistic time trying to scare you. Or maybe that’s just my posts — I tend to get the environmental danger of the week. But, sorry to say, I’ve got another thing for you to be frightened of, and it’s something you might not expect: armadillos.
That’s …
EcocentricWildlife
For smokers, the world has always been one big ashtray, with cigarettes flicked away pretty much anywhere. That’s especially true now, since smokers are increasingly forbidden to light up in restaurants, office buildings and even new no-smoking condos. In the great river of litter human beings create each year, so tiny a thing as a …
EcocentricEcocentric
For all the—very necessary—focus on the 21st century problems of climate change and shifting to a cleaner energy economy, we’re still beset by industrial pollution that hasn’t changed a whole lot since the 19th century. Air pollution—from smog to sooty particulates—is still a major health threat to much of the country. How much? …
