Back before things went pear-shaped this weekend, Jonathan Zasloff had a good post about why “clean coal” is important: I think it’s terrific that the Coen Brothers are making funny, effective ads against relying on “clean coal” as part of the US energy program. But I worry that the clean energy community is really missing […]
Category: Environment
Global Warming at Boskone: Not That Awful
Sunday morning at Boskone, I moderated a panel on “Global Warming: Facts and Myths, (and all that jazz)”, featuring James Morrow, Mark Olson, and Vince Docherty. As noted previously, I was a little worried that this would turn out to be absolutely awful in one of a couple of obvious ways, but it wound up […]
How to Moderate a Discussion of Global Warming?
As noted in the previous post, I’m supposed to be moderating a panel at Boskone the weekend after next, with the title: Global Warming: Facts and Myths, (and all that jazz) This is not my usual line, but then, I don’t have to provide expert commentary, I just need to steer the discussion. Still, it […]
Jesse Ventura Is to Blame for This
I realize it’s been several years now since the World Wildlife Federation won their lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation, forcing Vince McMahon to re-brand his whole preposterous enterprise. Still, when I see a press release with the headline: WWF seeks innovative solutions to bycatch through worldwide competition I expect the “competition” to be settled […]
With Advisors Like These, Who Needs Policy?
A few years ago, the after-dinner speaker at the DAMOP conference banquet was Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger. As I wrote at the time, I think it’s safe to say that he didn’t make a positive impression on the audience. It also sparked a rather lively discussion afterwards, that some people speculated was the reason […]
RFK Jr.
Looking over my scheduled posts for today, I see that there isn’t anything stridently political. Not wanting to shock the systems of readers still coming down off the election, let me add my voice to the chorus of ScienceBloggers expressing concern over the idea of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Environmental Protection […]
Puzzling Solar Panel Press Release
Getting back to science, at least for the moment, I was puzzled by a press release from RPI, with the eye-catching headline Solar power game-changer: ‘Near perfect’ absorption of sunlight, from all angles. The article describes work published in Optics Letters (that I haven’t been able to put my hands on yet), developing new anti-reflection […]
Optimism and the Depression
This week’s department colloquium was Roel Snieder of the Colorado School of Mines on The Global Energy Challenge. I have to admit, I was somewhat rude, and spent a lot of the talk futzing with my tablet, but really, while his presentation of the material was very good, the material itself wasn’t new to me– […]
Cheaper Than Graduate Students
Lots of people talk about “Science 2.0” and “crowdsourcing” and the like. EurekAlert provides a story about taking it to the next level: Nalini Nadkarni of Evergreen State College currently advises a team of researchers who sport shaved heads, tattooed biceps and prison-issued garb rather than the lab coats and khakis typically worn by researchers. […]
Virtual Science Debate
As you might have guessed from yesterday’s tease, the folks at ScienceDebate 2008 have now managed to get answers from the McCain campaign (to go with Obama’s froma few weeks ago). Which means that while you may never see them answering science questions on a stage together, you can put them head-to-head on the Web, […]