Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Opinion – The Conversation

Understanding microbial activity in rhizosphere – the critical zone where plant roots, microbes and minerals interface – is critical to promoting plant health. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Tapping the ‘plant microbiome’ to improve farming and plant health

Elizabeth Bent, University of Guelph

People are increasingly aware of the link between the trillions of microbes that live within our bodies and human health. Studies have found that a healthy population of bacteria, or a microbiome, in a…

Oil drillers in North Dakota flares natural gas, but much of it – a potent greenhouse gas – escapes into the atmosphere. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Will Obama’s ‘fugitive methane’ plan reduce or increase our dependence on natural gas?

Nathan Phillips, Boston University

Like many Americans concerned with climate change and energy security, I reacted with high hopes to the President Obama’s proposal to reduce leaks of methane gas from oil and gas drilling. But on closer…

Monitoring energy is first step to saving energy. Shutterstock

Smart homes: consumers favor home security over efficiency

Ravi Srinivasan, University of Florida

The message from the yearly CES consumer electronics extravaganza was clear: the list of gadgets that can be connected to the “internet of things” is growing rapidly. These smart-home technologies have…

Hurricane Sandy pummeled cities along the east coast in 2012, causing billions of dollars of damage. Shutterstock

The economic cost of climate change: time for new math

Delavane Diaz, Stanford University

Climate change is as much an economic problem as an environmental one. The effects of climate change, such as damage from more severe weather or health problems from higher temperatures, will impose a…

Fill it up with hydrogen. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Explainer: For the future of electric vehicles, one size does not fit all

Scott Samuelsen, University of California, Irvine

In an effort to jumpstart adoption of fuel cell electric vehicles, Toyota Motors earlier this month made more than 5,600 patents available to other carmakers. A few days later, General Motors introduced…

Harvard and Rutgers scientists propose a new, potentially more accurate way, to measure the rate of sea level rise. Shutterstock

Solving the puzzle of sea-level rise by reexamining the past

Carling Hay, Harvard University

When you ask yourself what the biggest unanswered scientific questions are, “how did sea levels change over the past 100 years?” is unlikely to appear at the top of your list. After all, haven’t we already…

A depot used to store pipes for Transcanada Corp’s planned Keystone XL oil pipeline is seen in Gascoyne, North Dakota. Andrew Cullen/Reuters

How should we calculate the CO2 impact of the Keystone pipeline proposal?

Peter Erickson, Stockholm Environment Institute and Michael Lazarus, Stockholm Environment Institute

Big energy infrastructure projects – power plants, coal mines, long distance transmission lines – take time, resources and, typically, some political muscle. They create highly visible if short-lived construction…

Prices of gas are approaching $2 a gallon. Does that make it a good time to raise the gas tax? Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Why hiking the US gasoline tax is back on the table

Wallace Tyner, Purdue University

It is well known that the US has a major infrastructure problem with our national highway system. Many of our bridges are in a very poor state of repair and highway maintenance is not keeping up with needs…