Category: General Interest

Waste to Energy/Waste to Fuels: the Great Greenwashing Machine

Most of us find waste to be viscerally repugnant. The smell and even the appearance of garbage revolts us. And yet we all generate it, in seemingly endless quantity. In “developed” (rich) nations, we therefore have built extensive systems to get this repugnant material out of sight, and hence out of our minds, as quickly […]

Global Warming Risk Arises From Three Facts

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a real risk for future generations including my own children. It’s a risk I’ve personally taken seriously, and have taken personal action against, since the late 1980s when I was in university. And while we’ve seen some extremely positive developments in the past 30 years such as the creation of new industries […]

Ammonia Pneumonia

Few in our society realize just how dependent we all are on a poison gas. Ammonia has literally permitted about half the humans on earth today to exist at all. The vast majority of our food calories, and especially those of our food animals, are totally dependent on ammonia as the source of nitrogen fertilizer. […]

What is #hopium?

First of all, #hopium isn’t my original idea. I would attribute the use of the term to the person who I first heard use it, but sadly I’ve forgotten. The moment I heard it, I knew this was the ideal description of a problem I’d been seeing in numerous areas of our attempt to decarbonize […]