See Past the Fracking Hype

2017-05-30T17:44:37-04:00December 20th, 2013|Energy, Environment and Energy|

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.

No Trains, No Keystone XL?

2017-05-31T18:50:36-04:00July 11th, 2013|Energy, Environment and Energy|

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.

Climate Change’s Costs Hit the Plate

2017-10-11T19:08:05-04:00July 24th, 2012|Climate Change, Environment and Energy|

In the mid-1980s, when I was a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and beginning to study climate change, I attended a lecture by a specialist in plant physiology at nearby Harvard University. He spoke about global warming’s impact on crop productivity. He was quite optimistic. More carbon dioxide in the air, he explained, causes certain kinds of plants to grow faster. So, on balance, food output should rise in a warmer and CO2-rich world.

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