Latest Articles
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New York chef urges people to get back in the kitchen
Dan Barber is one of the most highly regarded chefs in the United States. Back in the late 1990s, his small Manhattan restaurant Blue Hill got lots of buzz for Dan’s innovative cooking. But even while he was dazzling diners with his technique, Dan was already haunting Manhattan’s Union Square Greenmarket for ingredients, before many […]
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Consumers demand market rejection of food from cloned animals
Consumer market rejection seems to be the ongoing theme of U.S. food politics in the waning days of Bush’s inept Food and Drug Administration. Given FDA’s repeated failure to protect our nation’s food supply or to respond quickly and appropriately to outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, consumers have turned to food companies and demanded that they […]
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New sea-level rise research, part 1: ‘Most likely’ 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100
Two major new studies, in Nature and Science, sharply increase the projected sea-level rise (SLR) by 2100. This post discusses the Science study ($ub. req’d), “Kinematic Constraints on Glacier Contributions to 21st-Century Sea-Level Rise,” which concludes: On the basis of calculations presented here, we suggest that an improved estimate of the range of SLR to […]
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Ford won’t sell 65-mpg diesel car in U.S.
The Ford Fiesta ECOnetic, a small, sporty five-seater that gets an impressive 65 miles per gallon, will the hit the road in November — but only in Europe. “We just don’t think North and South America would buy that many diesel cars,” says Ford America President Mark Fields. The new generation of diesel cars, which […]
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Phoenix NBA team to add solar system to arena’s roof
Going solar is a slam dunk for the Phoenix Suns, who are installing a 196 kW solar system on their arena’s roof. This installation was made possible by the state’s Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff, which was implemented by the state’s Corporation Commission and is currently under threat on several fronts. Arizona’s primary was last […]
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Palin’s ‘energy expertise’
Alaska is basically a petrostate — to the extent oil prices rise, it benefits. Thus politicians in Alaska develop a very sophisticated ability to encourage Alaskan energy exploration and to use the resulting revenue to garner support among their constituents. It’s difficult to see how that sort of “expertise” is going to translate to the […]
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Conservative heavy-hitters discuss what makes for a safer world
Kate and I mostly spent our time at the RNC seeking out energy/environment-related events, but I wanted to go to at least a few on other subjects, just to see if our issues popped up anywhere outside their normal silo. In that spirit, on Wed. afternoon I attended a panel discussion called "Building a Better, […]
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Nature: Hurricanes are getting fiercer
Nature has published a major analysis that supports my recent two–parter. As Nature explains: … scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide. The maximum wind speeds of the strongest tropical cyclones have increased significantly since 1981, according to […]
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Germany opens world’s first carbon-capturing ‘clean coal’ demo plant
Germany will next week open the world’s first “clean coal” plant actually ready to capture and store its carbon-dioxide emissions. The 30-megawatt, $100 million Schwarze Pumpe demonstration plant will burn coal in an atmosphere of oxygen instead of regular air, producing some 10 tons per hour of compressed CO2 that can be captured and buried […]
