Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Opinion
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In the 1920s and 1930s crews surveyed much of California, collecting information about vegetation. This photo was taken in 1936 by Albert Wieslander.
Marian Koshland Biosciences Library
Scientists in my native state of California were handed a gift: a trove of detailed information about the state’s forests taken during the 1920s and 1930s and digitized over the past 15 years. When we…
A natural gas well in Bradford County, PA.
Reuters
In a surprise decision that led to consternation in the oil and gas industry and elation among fracking opponents, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in December banned fracking in the state. He attributed…
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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…