States that are using the recently popular technique of fracking (hydraulic fracturing) are seeing a dramatic increase in earthquake activity. How dramatic? From 1978 to 2008, Oklahoma was struck with an average of two quakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater. In the time period, June 2009 to June 19, 2014, there were 207 such quakes […]
The Republicans in the House just passed what is supposed to be a boring spending bill entitled “Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act”. Except that they riddled it with gifts to special interests and abject stupidity: They slashed funding for renewable energy programs, while boosting funding for coal and other fossil fuels. […]
As I’ve been predicting in this blog for a long time, solar energy just makes way more sense than burning fossil fuels, even ignoring environmental issues and just going on pure economics. The only thing keeping fossil fuels going now is huge governmental subsidies. The Guardian puts it bluntly — “Even if coal were free […]
You may have seen terms like “mesh network” and “power grid” but not paid much attention (or even knew their significance), but the ideas behind these terms are becoming very important in many diverse ways. Whenever you connect things together, there are generally two ways to do it: in a centralized way, or in a […]
There has been quite a bit of attention focused on high frequency trading recently, partially brought on by the book “Flash Boys”. But in a must-read editorial in the NY Times, Paul Krugman points out that the stunning amounts of money being spent on high frequency trading systems is really just one symptom of an […]
I’m not just talking about natural resources or fuels. Do we have the political resources and energy to solve our most pressing national problems: namely global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity. While it is clear that our elected representatives don’t have the political resources or energy to tackle these problems, a group called The […]
This blog has promoted the use of nuclear power to help solve our energy and climate change problems, but only if we can solve the problems of nuclear power. One such solution is switching from using uranium as nuclear fuel to using thorium, but so far the nuclear power industry has ignored that solution. Well, […]
The prevailing discourse about energy is particularly interesting to me as an example of the politics of scarcity. The conventional wisdom (based on rampant misinformation) is that we are running out of energy, which is why we need to fight expensive and terrible wars for oil, pollute our air and water, build costly pipelines to […]
Despite all the noise about renewable energy sources — solar, biomass, wind, geothermal, and hydropower — not yet being ready for prime time, Yale University points out that all of the additional electricity-generating capacity added in the US in November came from renewable energy sources. Lest you think that was a fluke, in October 99% […]
Months of intense negotiations have resulted in an historic agreement with Iran that signals a “game-changing rapprochement that would reduce the risk of a wider Middle East war“. Iran has agreed to place strict limits on their nuclear activities and submit to increased inspections. In return, the US — along with France, Germany, Britain, China, […]
I guess I should not have been surprised by this one, but the clarity of it is pretty breathtaking. A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at attitudes about energy efficiency in liberals and conservatives. First, they gave people a fixed amount of money and gave them a […]
[via Media Matters] Two months ago, Fox News anchor Jon Scott did a negative story about Tesla, the electric car maker. He used Tesla as an example of bad government spending, saying “we are all sort of co-owners of Tesla — that company got hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars as part of the president’s, […]
This week, Texas Republican Joe Barton gave irrefutable evidence at a Congressional hearing that climate change is not man made: I would point out that if you are a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the great flood was an example of climate change. That certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon […]
© Matt Wuerker I can’t think of a single reason why we shouldn’t stop subsidizing oil production in this country. Even if we don’t pour money into alternative, sustainable energy, if we stop subsidizing fossil fuels then I believe that the market would create plenty of increased demand for alternatives. In fact, as I’ve said […]
Only on Fox News. Why let reality get in the way of defending the stranglehold large multinational oil companies have on our energy future? Fox and Friends was ridiculing Obama’s “failed” strategy to promote solar energy in the US, but there was the little detail of Germany to contend with. Germany is leading the world […]
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