I volunteer on Quora.com to answer questions on renewable energy, and, even though I signed up for that specific category, I come across some really stimulating queries that are totally unrelated. Today, for instance, someone asked: What’s the weirdest aspect of your culture?”
It’s really hard to know where to start on that one. (more…)
When you own your small or medium-sized business, it’s tempting to assume that allegations about the energy-guzzling corporate monster don’t apply to you. That’s a label for the multinationals and commercial giants that have the budgets to actually do something about the global climate crisis.
For you, there are plenty of other financial concerns to contend with, from rent to increasing bills. Add in tricky customers and demanding employees, and your plate is pretty full. (more…)
Creating a successful vegetable garden can be intimidating at first. You have to consider everything from the space you have, the seeds you can grow, and the soil type you have available. Even when it seems like everything is in line, you can still end up with some pretty pathetic produce. But by simply keeping in mind a few helpful tips, your veggies will be bigger and more bountiful this year.
Start with Soil
Building your garden starts literally from the ground up. Rich soil will result in healthy, lush, and highly producing plants. (more…)
If you believe that personal urban transportation has an important future (which I do), here’s a really clever design that looks safe, fun, attractive—and potentially cost-effective. Readers will note that I support a similar design (on the 2GreenEnergy “clean energy investors” page). (more…)
A wide range of scientific studies have shown that fossil fuel extraction, refining and usage causes severe environmental damage, such as ozone depletion, global warming and ocean pollution. Additionally, many of the byproducts of fossil fuel processing, usage and environmental accidents harm the health of people and animals.
Although the public needs to take more than four steps to end fossil fuel dependence, the following steps are critical to forcing people to embrace change. (more…)
Reader Upgeya Pew offers a very plausible explanation for why Ian Bremmer, a person of incredible intelligence, could posit that one of the benefits of climate change is creating easier access to Arctic oil. Pew notes: Bremmer is well paid to have views like this. The people he consults for are resistant to change and are enriched by business as usual. So he has to provide them with the “opportunities” in the disaster their exploitation is creating. (more…)
In response to my piece on the Environmental Impact of Electric Transportation, frequent commenter MarcoPolo wonders, mockingly, how it’s possible that many EV advocates don’t own EVs. I suppose that, by extension, he’s implying that any environmentalists who doesn’t adopt every piece of cleantech is a hypocrite.
Needless to say, I’ve heard that argument before, but I have never understood why anyone would find it compelling. (more…)
It’s the birthday of Ernest Rutherford, best known for presenting us with the first model of the atom that included electrons spinning around a tiny but relatively high-mass nucleus of the opposite charge. He won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1908, which irritated him, in that he deemed that chemistry had less value than physics. He said, “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” (more…)
Albeit off-topic, I thought I’d post this all-too typical conversation I’m having with an acquaintance on Facebook. She posted a video of some ISIS people brutalizing their captives, and writes: This is Islam in the real world! NO FILTER NO BS!
Craig Shields: Does this seem like a fair generalization of 1.6 billion people to you? 26% of the world’s population? (more…)
Frequent commenter “Breath on the Wind” provides some very interesting and important math in response to my recent post about charging electric vehicles. His central point is that the incremental amount of load on the grid associated with converting all our cars and trucks to EVs is far less than most people realize.
That’s quite correct–and here’s another way to look at the math: About 28% of the total energy consumption in the US is transportation, so one might jump to the conclusion that we would need to increase the supply of electricity by 28% if we were to convert our cars and trucks to electric. (more…)
