Uncategorized

Malcolm Gladwell on geothermal home heating

Malcolm Gladwell, of all people, has a long post up on geothermal home heating, of all things, including a fairly detailed explanation of the technology from his father, of all people.

(Gladwell, for those of you living under a rock, is the author of such wildly successful pop-theory books as The Tipping Point and Blink.)

Limitless sequestration?

Revkin points us to a new study that purports to identify exactly the undersea conditions necessary for "a limitless, low-risk repository for carbon dioxide."

More Wal-Mart

This is funny, but it also plays into another point I want to make about Wal-Mart:

After a long day searching houses in suffocating Iraqi heat, Lance Corporal Mike Wilson of Princeton, Kentucky recalls seeing relief in the distance.

Wilson said that looking through the haze he thought he saw a Wal-Mart and was ready to get some cold water for his men when he discovered it was an illusion.

(It's getting up around 125F in Iraq. Why are we there again?)

This average kid, plucked out of Kentucky, wandering through the desert heat ... what does he see when he hallucinates? Wal-Mart.

Woe is Gristmill

It seems that August is vacation season here at Grist. My colleague Lisa Hymas has fled town for three weeks, and as she is the secret glue that holds this place together, expect chaos. There are also other editorial staffers taking vacations at various times, so we're all scrambling to cover for each other. In short: expect somewhat lighter blogging for the next few weeks. And more angst.

Brian F. Keane, renewable-energy marketer, answers questions

Brian Keane. What’s your job title? I’m president of SmartPower. What does your organization do? SmartPower is a national nonprofit marketing campaign that promotes the use of clean, renewable energy as a safe, readily available alternative to coal, oil, and other limited sources of power. In short, we’re the “Got Milk” people for wind, solar, […]

Champion of ‘social ecology’ dies at 85

Murray Bookchin, who championed a democratic and anti-authoritarian vision of environmental politics, died last week in Vermont at 85.

Bookchin has for years been on my must-read list. I write and work from within a tradition he helped shape. As Brian Tokar recently put it in his obit on Counterpunch, Bookchin sought to "reclaim local political power, by means of direct popular democracy, against the consolidation and increasing centralization of the nation state."

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Cut ‘Em

Group tries logging forests to save them In order to save logged-over areas from development while improving wildlife habitat and creating jobs, the Virginia-based nonprofit Conservation Fund plans to … log them more. It’s a counterintuitive approach that’s raising some hackles in the environmental community. The group has been acquiring thousands of acres of less-profitable […]

New report documents water pollution

It's hot. Not "well, duh, it's August" hot -- I mean really hot. I mean having a barbeque in Zimbabwe hot. But this isn't a global warming post; I leave that to the more-than-capable climate bloggers. I'm an oceans guy and this post is about the oceans, or rather, the beaches.

If you're like me, you endure the baking temperatures by reminding yourself that the beach is only a work week away. The thought of a dip in the Chesapeake Bay helps me feel a little cooler (but just a little). So it's no surprise that last week's Washington Post article on the Bay's pollution caught my eye.

Forsmark and Several Fears Ago

Sweden shuts down four nuke reactors after near-meltdown of one The near-meltdown of one of Sweden’s 10 nuclear reactors has resulted in the closure of three additional reactors over safety concerns. It’s also fueled a raging debate in the country over the future of nuclear power. After a short-circuit of the national grid kept power […]

Umbra on running and pollutants

Dear Umbra, I am a runner, and in the summertime it is difficult for me to run during the day because of the heat. Unfortunately, it’s a no-no for me to run in green spaces late at night because they are dark, deserted, and thus quite unsafe. So this leaves me the option of running […]