You can’t beat that. Catching up on my reading, I came across this terrific article, Construction plant, from the FT from a couple of weeks ago. Hemp is the building material that can work wonders. (This reminds me of biochar, one of the most exciting developments in agriculture and horticulture to come along in a […]
According to Mineweb, Greenland Minerals and Metals (a company) has finished an initial report on the Kvanefjeld site on Greenland’s southwest tip. Kvanefjeld could potentially become a major rare earth mine and would also produce uranium. Greenland noted that Kvanefjeld’s Joint Ore Reserve Committee (Jorc)-compliant resource estimate, containing 4,79-million tons of rare earth oxides (REO) and […]
I wrote in September about what I identified as Tom Friedman’s Strange Call on China. I was reporting that the “NY Times” hadn’t printed a letter I’d written in response to one of Friedman’s columns – Our One-Party Democracy – and so wanted to share the column and response. Funny thing: They did print […]
I’ll be in august company tonight, discussing climate change on The Hyperbole Hour. Gavin Schmidt will be talking about climate science, and Amanda Little and I will be kicking around some policy and politics. I had the opportunity to review Gavin’s book, Climate Change: Picturing the Science, for “Nature Reports Climate Change” and I had […]
The challenge of delivering food to Haitians recovering from the January 12th earthquake has taken a new dimension. More food aid and locally grown food is available, but devising an effective system to distribute food remains a challenge. Currently, over 20 aid agencies, as well as the Haitian government are competing to mobilize distribution efforts […]
We’re up in Cambridge, Mass., and were over at the MIT Museum yesterday. One exhibit looked at the work of Daniel Nocera and his colleagues on developing a new catalytic process to convert water to oxygen and hydrogen. There is wonderful potential in this to create a zero carbon, closed loop distributed energy system. The […]
I had a very busy end of the week and now I’m out of town, so I haven’t been reporting. Here, however, are two pretty interesting reads for you, from two of my favorite writers. The first is from Fiona Harvey, indefatigable environmental correspondent for the FT. She has some unkind words for some of […]
Qatar Tribune reported a top-level Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP) delegation, led by QNFSP chairman Fahd al Attiyah, will visit agricultural research institutes and meet senior U.S. government officials from the White House, the State Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy during its week-long U.S. program. Qatar is keen on […]
Once a net exporter of grain products, Zimbabwe’s fortunes have reversed over the past decade, becoming a steady seeker of food aid and increasingly relying on international food aid. Approximately half of the nation’s 12 million people are in need of aid, as crop failures and barren fields resulted in the all-time high number being […]
In my experience, most people, if you ask them about oil (or gas) drilling, make references to Daniel Day-Lewis with a pickax, snarling something about milkshakes, or perhaps Jed Clampett shootin’ at some food. For those interested in energy issues, it never hurts to be a little more well-versed in the how-to’s. So if you […]
I wrote, in the wake of the shameful Chinese performance in Copenhagen, about China, Climate and Trade. A couple of days after that post, there was an excellent analysis in the “FT” and I wrote a letter to the editor, alas unpublished. Here’s the letter now: Geoff Dyer rightly wonders “…whether China’s political system is […]
I’ve wondered out loud here several times about convergence – getting our galloping consumption down in the developed world while simultaneously raising the standard of living for the citizens of developing nations. You can do this a thousand different ways, most of which can “cool” the planet. One critical approach is for developing economies to […]
How do you cope when your main source of political good will depends on money and that money dries up? Demand for oil just ain’t what it used to be. The shrinking of state revenues (regardless of the price of oil) is putting a cramp in the political and social largess of two countries — […]
I wrote here a while ago about food miles – see under Transportation of Food. I looked at two arguments: that the long distances we transport food has a discernible impact on the production of greenhouse gases – and that it doesn’t. From what I’ve been reading over the past couple of years, the weight […]
The excellent “Green Energy Reporter” had an item noting a new study on mountaintop removal mining and Stephen Colbert’s take. There are huge environmental and health impacts associated with coal mining, as I’ve noted a number of times, here and here, among others. Now a group of scientists, led by the University of Maryland’s Dr. […]