On Thursday last week, the Schenectady weather forecast I have in my Bloglines feed called for “Tons of Rain,” which I thought was amusingly unprofessional. I mentioned this to Kate yesterday (after it had, in fact, rained quite a bit), and she said “I wonder how much rain you would need to make a ton?” […]
Category: Environment
The Problem with Solar Energy
Over at The Island of Doubt, James Hrynyshyn has a post about solar skepticism on the part of some researchers, who think that claims of increased efficiency are often overhyped. Of course, efficiency isn’t the only issue. A couple of weks ago, we had a colloquium talk by Peter Persans of RPI, who is working […]
Energy-Efficient Appliance Question
So, we’d like to get a new refirgerator (our current refrigerator is pretty old and beat. When the compressor kicks on, the lights in the living room flicker, and the shelf on the inside of the door is broken, which greatly reduces the useful storage space.), and being good liberal types, we’d like something energy-efficient. […]
White House: “More Study Needed” on Gore Nobel
(WASHINGTON, DC) On the heels of reports from Oslo that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore, a White House spokesman issued a statement saying that “significant uncertainty” remained regarding the recipient of the prize. “The President feels that […]
DonorsChoose: Little Scientists
Here’s another post to highlight a worthy proposal with a good science connection. “Little Scientists” is looking to bring marine habitats to pre-kindergarten students in Buffalo: Animals and life sciences are of particular interest to young children, so we try to discover a lot about animals and habitats. We are also very lucky to have […]
DonorsChoose: Cruise the Forest
We’re one week into the DonorsChoose challenge for this year, and readers of this blog have already contributed over $2,000 to help school teachers and students. Those of you who have contributed, thank you very much for your generosity. We’ve still got $4,000 to go to reach the goal for the challenge, though, so there […]
Student Sustainability Video
One of our senior physics majors has made a video promoting sustainability to students, and posted it on YouTube. I need to figure out the best way to link it from the department web page, but it occurs to me that I have this big Internet platform I can use to plug it: It’s a […]
Wednesday Hawk Blogging
On the way in from the parking lot yesterday, I caught up with a colleague from Mechanical Engineering, who was on a bike, but had stopped to look at one of the local raptors. There are at least two red-tailed hawks living on campus, and one of them was on the ground only ten or […]
History of Lawns?
It’s spring here in suburbia, which means my neighbors were all out this weekend hastening the doom of the planet by running their gas-powered lawn mowers. Not me– I was, um, paying our neighbors’ teenage son to mow our lawn. With a gas-powered lawn mower. OK, I’m not exactly staking out the Moral High Ground, […]
Pimp Me New Cars
As Kate and I set out to run errands the other day, the “Service Engine Soon” idiot light came on in my car (a 1999 Ford Taurus LX). This may or may not mean anything– Kate got one of those in her Prius a while back and it was nothing– but if it’s actually an […]