The Solar Energy Rabbit Hole: $1.6 Billion, Much of It Public Funds,...
Meine Geshcichte ist nicht angenehm, sie ist nicht Süß und harmonisch wie die erfundenen Geschichten, sie schmeckt nach Unsinn und Verwirrung, nach Wahnsinn und Traum wie das Leben aller Menschen, die...
View ArticleHow Are Those Carbon Stabilization "Wedgies" Working Out? Part I:...
In 2004, two Princeton scientists, Steven Pacala and Robert Socolow, published a famous paper called Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies....
View ArticleGermany To Fund New Coal and Gas Plants with Climate Money.
This year, because of the ignorance, fear and superstition of the anti-nuke cults, Germany will be dumping an extra 500 million metric tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the earth's atmosphere....
View ArticleGerman Energy Research At Work: "Green" Coal Mining.
Recently a self confessed anti-nuke sockpuppet in this space tried out (again) the lie that the anti-nuke industry is something other than a, well, puppet of the dangerous fossil fuel industry. I...
View ArticlePlant Toxicology and the Accumulation of Tetracycline Antibiotics in the...
Recently I was discussing the issue of antibiotics in the environment with someone on this site who I rather enjoy - many of my interactions here are, um, unpleasant and frankly depressing to the point...
View ArticleCarbon Dioxide Emissions From Plug In Hybrids.
No self-respecting liberal can help but have sympathy with the famous and much hyped "Occupy Wall Street" movement, although my own suspicion is that at the end of the day it will mean very little...
View ArticleWaiting for that Renewable Nirvana: Colorado Oil Shale and Heavy Metals.
Nobody has bought into the enthusiasm for so called "renewable energy," as our petroleum producing mavens have done. I remind everyone that for sometime before the Horizon disaster in the Gulf of...
View ArticleAn Experiment I Always Wanted To Perform Gets Done...
...and it's a modest experiment.In my last diary here a correspondent correctly noticed that I am a rhetorical hypocrite. I derided "percent talk" of the type that solar energy advocates always use....
View ArticleA Very Cool Little POLITICAL Book In An Engineering Library.
I have happily developed a familial tradition of taking my kids, one in high school, the other in junior high, to the local university libraries on the weekend for homework sessions.It's a pretty good...
View ArticleDenmark to Drill Arctic Oil and Gas: A Fashionista Complaint
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang, but a whimper. -T.S. Eliot You can get lots of cheers for Denmark in this space, because of...
View ArticleNature Reports "Unprecedented" Ozone Loss at the Northern Hemispheric Pole.
The most successful environmental international treaty was the Montreal Protocol which banned CFC's, chlorofluorocarbons, which were once hailed almost universally as a godsend, sort of, um, like the...
View ArticleWhen I Was a Kid, I Would Have Liked to Have Read this Paragraph...
...so being a father, and hoping that my children will not struggle through things that made me struggle with mathematical heuristics when I was a kid - although they may struggle with much worse than...
View ArticleThe Cost to China of Britain's Clean, "Green" Wind Power.
We had an October snow storm here in New Jersey last week, and for much of the weekend following I was without power, and my boys thought it was just great to not have electricity, water or heat. My...
View ArticleThe Effect of Polychlorinated Biphenyls on Killer Whale mRNA.
Probably many people are already aware of this, even in these times where contempt for science is ever more fashionable, but the mechanism by which the information contained in one's genome, which is...
View ArticleWhat Is the Energy Value of All the Sewage Sludge in Europe?
I like to read the fun scientific journal Energy and Fuels from time to time. If you must know, it's sort of a guilty pleasure, because so much of this journal is devoted to the chemistry of...
View ArticleThe Incorporation of PBDE Into DNA: A Carcinogen Mechanism.
I recently wrote a diary in this space on the subject of polychlorinated biphenyls and their effect on killer whale RNA in the Northeastern Pacific. In it, I made reference to polybrominated diphenyl...
View ArticleA New Treatment Is Proposed For Diabetic Foot Ulcers: Maggots.
Well, happily 2011 is coming to an end, and as it is, I've been reading all about maggots.Here's what I've been reading:CHICAGO -- Diabetic patients facing lower limb amputation because of non-healing...
View ArticleYoung Homeless Woman Wins Prestigious Science Award: Gets a Home.
This popped up today somehow on google scholar, a link to CNN of all places:Long Island, New York (CNN) -- A young, aspiring marine biologist -- who did not let living in homeless shelters on Long...
View ArticleScientists Synthesize Airborne Virulent H5N1 Flu Virus; Gov't Asks for...
I've been catching up on the kind of reading that one does while waiting for a pot of water to boil (without, of course, preventing boiling by watching the pot) or while waiting at Jiffy Lube for the...
View ArticleNo Free Carbon Capture Lunch: Chinese Discussion of "Closed" Carbon Cycles.
I oppose the continued use of dangerous fossil fuels, and want them all to be phased out. Many people give lip service to this conception, but then - and usually propose to couple this lip service...
View ArticleSaudi Arabia Goes, Um, Solar, Um, Really?
We have here, a diary written by a very popular diarist - an anti-nuke - on this website, a breathless announcement that the solar industry has been validated by the fact that Saudi Arabia is, um,...
View ArticleTracking Aerosol Palladium From Catalytic Converters In the Atmosphere.
Tonight, after returning home after a very long week, I decided to unwind and relax by reading about morbidity, mortality and risk associated with air pollution, not the serious form of air pollution...
View Article"Scientist Says" Los Angeles Is Sinking Because of Oil Withdrawal.
Let's play, "Scientist Says!!!!!"The article discussed in this (very stupid) diary comes from the prestigious scientific journal Nature and was published in the August 2001 issue, Vol. 412, pp....
View ArticleThe Natural Nuclear Reactors At Oklo, and Fundamental "Constants."
It appears that this will represent, should I publish it, the 373rd diary I've written here.Um...um...jeeze...this after taking a break for a year or so...jeeze...My first diary was in the last quarter...
View ArticleChina Already Has 100 Million Electric Vehicles.
The paper from the primary scientific literature I will discuss tonight in this brief diary is a joint publication from scientists at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tsinghua University in...
View ArticleThe Fate of Toilet Paper on Earth.
Every day, you handle the deadliest substance on earth. It is a weapon of mass destruction festering beneath your fingernails. In the past 10 years, it has killed more people than all the wars since...
View ArticleNYC Seeks To Ban the "Controversial" Word "Dinosaurs" From Texts.
Just in case you thought for a moment that your country wasn't doomed, from CNN:New York city schools want to ban 'loaded words' from testsIn its request for proposal, the NYC Department of Education...
View ArticleLargest German Solar Cell Manufacturer Goes Bankrupt.
Q-Cells, once the world's biggest maker of solar panels, is filing for bankruptcy. The German firm says it has abandoned an attempt to refinance its debts and will file for insolvency on Tuesday.Like...
View ArticleMeasuring the Particulate Pollution Levels from Renewable Energy in New Zealand.
A while back an anti-nuke wrote a classic comment in one of my diaries that since indoor air pollution killed "only" 2.0 million people per year - citing a link that I use repeatedly in my arguments,...
View ArticleSome Swell Organic Chemistry for Extraction of Palladium From Used Nuclear Fuel.
One cannot help but to appreciate one's first love, and my first scientific love was synthetic organic chemistry, which is a very beautiful science - one that generates a great sense of aestheticism...
View ArticleNew Threat to Chernobyl Area Wildlife Observed.
That would be the threat to return people to the area.The PBS series Nature covered the state of wildlife in the exclusion zone in 2011. You may watch the entire episode here: Radioactive...
View ArticleDirect Measurement of the Benefits of "Renewable Energy" for Gambian Children.
Split wood, not atoms.From the start of the genetic modification of a certain subset of hominid great apes about a few hundred thousand years ago - another word for "genetic modification" is evolution...
View ArticleThe Use of Carbon Dioxide To Oxidize Ethylbenzene to Styrene.
One of the most important chemical reactions industrially - for better or for worse - is the production of styrene, which is of course, the chemical precursor for the widely used plastic...
View ArticleThe Metal Technetium.
Some years back, in 2007 - which in NNadir time is about 150 billion tons of dumped dangerous fossil fuel ago (or in more traditional units of time, about 5 years ago) - I wrote a diary in this space...
View ArticleClimate Tech: Thermal Barrier Coatings in High Temperature Turbines.
Recently I attended parts of a series of lectures hosted by the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.The most recent lecture was by Dr. David Eaglesham (formerly) Chief Technology officer of...
View ArticleApril 2012: Highest Carbon Dioxide Levels Ever Recorded at the Mauna Loa...
The fact stated in the title of this diary should surprise no one, although it must be said that carbon dioxide levels do fluctuate annually. The level of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon...
View ArticleSome Remarks On the PNAS Radioactive Tuna Paper.
Recently here and elsewhere there's been some hubub about the "Fukushima Radioactive Tuna." Hopefully the ignorance, fear and superstition surrounding the famous radioactive tuna will result in less...
View ArticlePresident Lincoln, General McClellan, and the Cost of Nuclear Reactors.
I am reminded of a famous letter, dated October 13, 1862 that President Lincoln wrote General George B. McClellan, who had already been removed at the Commander in Chief of the Amry but was still...
View ArticleGovernment Work, Government Works.
One of the great lies of the latter part of the 20th century is that government doesn't work.Of course it does. The United States Government, beginning with its own invention, has always supported...
View ArticleFollowing Carbon Dioxide Flows In Groundwater with Radioactive Species.
The paper I will discuss in this brief diary is in the "ASAP" section - as of this writing - of the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology, a publication of the American Chemical...
View ArticleEmergency Mitigation Schemes For The Release of Arctic Methane.
One of the major news items this week is Katie Holmes's impending divorce from that guy who is protecting all of humanity from the shennigans associated with the galactic dictator Xenu. I hope that...
View ArticleTaryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII
Mostly my diaries in this space are about energy, and are written is a tone of mocking and despair. This one is not. This is a diary about art.With the holiday coming on a Wednesday, and with oodles...
View ArticleGlycerol as a Biofuel.
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth“Rip down all hate,” I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull. I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers Foundationed deep, somehow Ah, but I was...
View ArticleIs It Just the Weather?
The paper from the primary scientific literature comes from a scientific journal from the Nature publishing group, a relatively new journal, Nature Climate Change. The title of the paper is "A...
View ArticleDirect Capture of Carbon Dioxide From the Air.
The practice described in the title of this diary will, I predict, never happen, although, as I will describe below relying on a paper published in the scientific journal Industrial and Chemical...
View ArticleThe Transplutonium Element Curium Found On Mars
It is, you know. (Someone put it there.) Curium, named for the great nuclear chemist Marie Curie, was discovered by Glenn Seaborg.Tomorrow Darleane Hoffman, the great nuclear chemist - now in her...
View ArticleThe Mars Curiosity Rover Can Detect Chiral Compounds.
This will be a very brief note.In the comments section of my last diary on this website, The Transplutonium Element Curium Found On Mars, I remarked, in response to a question that the Curiosity...
View ArticleHow Much Gasoline Could Hydrogenation of ONE Coal Plant's Waste Produce?
Some people are complaining about the scant attention being paid to climate change in the current election. I'm not among them, and it's not because I am unconcerned with the outcome of the dumping...
View ArticleAll the Straw In China, a B.O.E. Calculation for Carbon Capture Potential.
So called "renewable energy," as represented by the combustion of biomass, is a major health problem on this planet, responsible for a considerable fraction of the 3.3 million deaths associated with...
View ArticleParasitic Mistletoe, Drought, and Pine Forest Destruction.
The paper from the primary scientific literature that I will discuss in this diary is from the journal Tree Physiology and has the (long winded) title "Mistletoe effects on Scots pine decline following...
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