A big bet on geothermal could help prevent a climate catastrophe
Directly under our feet, there’s enough heat emanating from the planet’s core to satisfy humanity’s future zero-carbon electricity needs thousands of times over.
Directly under our feet, there’s enough heat emanating from the planet’s core to satisfy humanity’s future zero-carbon electricity needs thousands of times over.
with Yonatan Strauch | Is Canada going to be the first country to break apart over the issue of climate change? That may seem like a hyperbolic question. But the fissures in our federation over climate and energy policy are now extraordinarily deep, and there’s little sign that they’ll close soon.
A poster widely circulated on the web highlights text that was purportedly written by me saying that wind power inevitably suffers an energetic deficit. The poster is fraudulent.
by Gordon Kent | Alberta needs to start shifting quickly out of the oilsands to avoid serious economic trouble as the world moves away from fossil fuels, a University of Waterloo professor says.
Albertans may well wonder if a plague of locusts will come next. From the 2013 floods, to the oil price collapse and the resulting fiscal crisis, to the Fort McMurray fires, the province has taken some heavy blows.
Consensus statement says the science is clear: there can be no more oils sands development if we are to solve the global climate crisis.
Wendy Palen, Thomas Homer-Dixon, et al. | As scientists spanning diverse disciplines, we urge North American leaders to take a step back: no new oil-sands projects should move forward unless developments are consistent with national and international commitments to reducing carbon pollution.
For years, NASA has produced a composite photograph of North America at night. Recently something strange has appeared in this image. Another patch of light—larger than Chicago’s—now glows in a sparsely populated region just south of the Canada-US border near Saskatchewan.
In a recent optimistic analysis, the US Energy Information Administration says drillers are learning how to put holes in the ground faster and release more oil from each hole; rig productivity in the Bakken field has quadrupled since 2007. But a close look at the data suggests that the EIA exaggerates the trend.
On hearing of the catastrophe in Lac-Mégantic, our first thoughts were with the city’s residents who had lost loved ones, friends, homes, and businesses. The accident was one of those jaw-dropping events that we all have trouble fully comprehending.