Tag Archives: Methane

Universal Hydrogen Economy: Part 2

This week, we’re back to our discussion about the hydrogen economy. The Economist published a great summary of the related challenges we’re facing right now: Today’s hydrogen business is, in global terms, reasonably small, very dirty and completely vital. Some 90m … Continue reading

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The End of Oil?

The UN COP26 is almost here: The latest round of global climate talks will take place from 31 October to 12 November 2021 in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Thousands of government delegates and people from civil society, business and the media … Continue reading

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Energy Companies Shifting Greener

What does it mean for oil companies to shift toward being “greener”? How can we measure that change? More than 8 years ago, I talked about how we can use the amount of unextracted fuels as a marker for this … Continue reading

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First-Principle Chemistry: Carbon Intensity

My last two blogs (May 4th and 11th) dealt with the challenges inherent in a new law that mandates carbon footprint reduction within large buildings in New York City, where I live and work. As with many other laws, there’s … Continue reading

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The American Jobs Plan & Power Generation by Source

Last week, when I discussed the new $2.3 trillion “American Jobs Plan,” I listed the costs of items that directly address climate change mitigation. The second most expensive item was the $174 billion program for electric vehicle incentive. A few … Continue reading

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Fake News

I am an old guy; my bucket list is modest but I am trying to check off the remaining items while I can still fully enjoy them. There’s only one that remains out of my reach: I want to travel … Continue reading

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Back to Climate Change: A Summary of What Happened in July

Figure 1 – Melting Siberian permafrost results in craters   Figure 2 – Detachment of Antarctican Iceberg the size of Delaware Even though I was on a vacation in Asia and Australia for a month, in this day and age … Continue reading

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What Do I Think of the World Bank Data? What Do You Think?

If you look at the World Bank database’s website, there is a section under Data called Indicators. Scrolling down that page gets us to the section on those that apply to climate change: Climate Change Access to electricity (% of … Continue reading

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Yes We Can 3: The Alcohol Debate

This will be the last in the series of blogs on EROI that started with John Morgan’s guest blog (November 4). The set of data in all three blogs was based on a paper by Weißbach et al. that suggested … Continue reading

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Where is our Tipping Point?

The spring semester is about to start. I am preparing to teach a new course on Physics & Society. I was chatting about the new course with a friend – a distinguished physicist. His comment was – don’t “forget” to … Continue reading

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