Recently, I commented on a comm. I shouldn't have. It was just another citation of yet another scientific theory that has been embraced with way, way too much enthusiasm by outlets beholdened to that sweet, sweet advertiser cash. And many if not most of those sponsors are somehow complicit in the carbon economy. The less this irritating ( Read more... )

Last year topped the list!

Yay?

Just about every time I toured a church or cathedral in Europe years ago and saw beautifully carved pews, screens and other ecclesiastic detritus, I thought about how well such preserved structures sequestered carbon within the wood itself. The trouble, of course, is volume.


( Read more... )

I haven't been following the news lately, but last I checked our atmosphere hit a milestone in human history by finally reaching the 400 parts per million concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In doing some preliminary research for this entry, I find that the number has since been revised downward . . . to 399.89 ppm.

Well, excuse us. ( Read more... )

Dear Mr. Randers,

I just finished your book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. I found it informative and an innovative approach to the challenges facing the human race in the years to come ( Read more... )

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait debunked the notion of an approaching ice age recently, a spurious theory based on misconceptions regarding the sun's magnetic cycle:

The Sun has a magnetic cycle, its magnetic field waxing and waning in strength roughly every 11 years. The strength and complexity of the solar field governs a lot of the surface activity, ( Read more... )

Just finished Albert K. Bates' The Biochar Solution (following up the cool stuff I heard about in another post). In it he listed a few new products that use or create biochar. Some I'd heard about already. Others. . . .

Click to view

This is the inventor showing off his LuciaStove, a pyrolytic stove. These stoves don't actually burn fuel in the traditional ( Read more... )

kmo had another great podcast over at the C-Realm the other day, interviewing long-time guest Albert K. Bates. This time Bates talked about something of which I've heard not even a peep: Biochar.

From one of his blog posts on the topic, Bates describes biochar as a charcoal formed from inactive, crystalized carbon. The end result of the biochar ( Read more... )

I got a lesson in life last night. Weirdly, I got it from playing with the Nintendo Wii ( Read more... )

"Thus, the bold and beautiful speculation has been made an experimental fact."

So said John Tyndale almost 150 years ago. What speculation did he demonstrate as fact? Global warming:

On 10 June, Tyndall demonstrated his experiments before a packed meeting at the Royal Institution, with Albert the prince consort in the chair. "To the eye, the ( Read more... )