Green Isn't Clean In the Laundry Room
In the battle against global warming, there is no more beloved phrase in Washington than "energy efficiency." Mandating energy-efficient appliances costs nothing in the budget and sounds painless to...
View ArticleScientific American v. The Skeptical Environmentalist
My column on Bjorn Lomborg prompted DannyK to ask: "Why didn't you mention anywhere in your piece that Lomborg's last book was widely criticized for poor scholarship and selective quotations? Perhaps...
View ArticleEconomists vs. Ecologists
Last week's column about Bjorn Lomborg's ideas for combatting global warming generated lots of angry comments, including the suggestion that Dr. Lomborg and I be fed to polar bears. I was more...
View ArticleBetting on Cheaper Oil
Since I've made a $5,000 bet that oil prices won't hit $200 per barrel in 2010, I'm glad to see a prophet who doesn't the share the current angst over rising energy prices. In an article in Foreign...
View ArticleGrand Dreams for Engineers
It's not exactly light reading, but there's plenty of good news in a report from the National Academy of Engineering. It's a list of the "Grand Challenges" in engineering this century compiled by an...
View ArticleObesity Promotes Global Warming?
As someone who commutes by bicycle into Manhattan, I would normally applaud any scientific rationale for more bike lanes. But some calculations in the new issue of the Lancet make me uncomfortable. The...
View ArticleMalthus vs. the Singularity
Before any other readers post another comment about "overpopulation" and doomsday scenarios, I suggest they take a look at my colleague Donald McNeil's excellent article on Malthusian mistakes. As he...
View ArticleWould You Buy an Electric Car Now?
With the skyrocketing price of gas, perhaps the time for electric cars has finally come.
View ArticlePresidential Physics Quiz
Richard Muller has created a physics quiz for future presidents that has nothing to do with snakes.
View ArticleObama on Science
They haven't yet achieved their goal of a televised presidential debate on science, but the organizers of ScienceDebate08 have gotten Senator Barack Obama's answers to 14 of their questions on science...
View ArticleThe Taboo Answer in Presidential Debate
Which energy path, hard or soft, should we take? That was the question I put to Lab readers, and I liked a lot of the answers better than what either presidential candidate offered in last night's...
View ArticleWhy Nukes? Why Energy Independence?
Which energy technologies get the heftiest subsidies? We've been debating that here in the Lab as nuclear-power advocates and renewable-energy advocates accuse each other of being on the dole. Here's a...
View ArticleScrubbing the Atmosphere
Governments are doing practically nothing to study the removal of carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, but this technology could be a much cheaper form of climate protection than photovoltaic...
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