This summer I interviewed Kristie Boering, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at UC Berkeley. We talked about the potential environmental side effects of moving to a hydrogen economy. Our discussion, boiled down to about 800 words, is in the current issue of California magazine. Boering is incredibly articulate, and I learned a lot in the [...]
In my last post, I mentioned that the spill isn’t just oil, but bunker fuel. What’s bunker fuel?
It’s the stuff that runs big engines, like in an oil tanker or cargo ship. And it’s cheap, which is why these high volume users use it.
Last year, I interviewed Dave Culp, an engineer who designs ship sails [...]
“Crunch!”? Really?
A huge cargo ship bumps into the Bay Bridge and spills 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel–not just oil, but bunker fuel–and this is the Chronicle’s headline? Is it supposed to be a joke?
When I looked at my copy this morning, I originally thought this was a feature recapping some little disaster that I hadn’t heard [...]
Check out Duane Moles’s video report “China: Undermined,” part of FRONTLINE/World’s online “Rough Cuts” series. I reported the story with him and Wu Nan last March in southern Shanxi Province.
Below, a photo I took of damage from underground coal mining in the home of a villager.
A few more pictures here. More available soon, I hope.
Keep your eyes open for an hour of voluntary darkness in San Francisco Saturday night. A “citywide conservation event” is scheduled from 8 to 9 p.m.; organizers from Lights Out San Francisco ask that all unessential lights be turned off during this time. Restaurants will serve by candlelight. They are getting a lot of attention.
In [...]
So much for La Niña? Not sure. But after record-high temperatures last week, tonight may be the coldest of the year, with lows dipping into the 20s in some spots around here, the result of cold air rolling in from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
PG&E must be breathing a corporate sigh of relief with the [...]
Every once in a while, I remember to tell people that there’s a lot of radioactive waste sprinkled just off the coast of San Francisco. Always a favorite piece of information.
The US Geological Survey’s Western Coastal and Marine Geology Group released a big report on the area around the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary when I [...]
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Speaking at the Greenbuild International Forum in Boston. 18 November 2008.
