Last week’s loss of the $420 million Glory satellite has sent NASA into an intensive investigation to find out why two climate change missions in a row — flying aboard the same type of rocket — crashed due to what apparently was a similar technical glitch. Orbital Sciences out of Dulles, Va. is the company [...]
The Ted Scripps Fellowship continues to keep me busy and happy. Through Charles Wilkinson’s environmental law class, I’ve become acquainted with Wallace Stegner and his book about John Wesley Powell. Too bad the class discussion won’t likely focus on Powell’s brave first run of the Colorado River; the descriptions triggered big homesickness for canyon country [...]
When it comes to teasing out the factors affecting Earth’s climate, the Sun is a compelling character. A rare breed of enthusiasts got pretty vocal about the Sun in the past year, when the great orb stayed quiet about a year longer than expected between the end of Solar Cycle 23 and the beginning of [...]
We know we have the technology to inject carbon dioxide into the ground. Oil and gas companies have been doing it for years, as a way to push the goods to the surface. But can we make it stay there, as a way to keep it out of the atmosphere?That’s the multi-million-dollar question. Carbon sequestration [...]
The good news — as it’s being couched out of the University of Colorado in Boulder — is that global warming is not likely to engender a great belch of methane from the permafrost that will kickstart a deadly methane cycle leading to further warming. But I don’t suppose it’s any more comfortable to realize [...]
