Energy and the Environment-A Coastal Perspective

Cape Wind, a 1500 GW h wind farm located in Nantucket Sound, is slated to be the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States of America.  It’s been approved and construction will begin this year.  A victory for the environmental movement?  Yes and no.  Although Cape Wind is going forward, how that process […]

It’s no secret that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.  One of the most arresting images from that documentary was the time-elapse footage of the state of Florida being gradually submerged by a rapid rise in the sea level.  In 2007, a British High Court […]

In our world today over 780 million people lack access to clean drinking water. That’s approximately one in nine people This staggering statistic has spurred the development of desalination plants, however most are very expensive, over $300 million and consume large amounts of energy because of the high temperatures for evaporation or high pressure for […]

In my first post I gave a brief explanation of the inseparability of emotion, or politics of identity, from issues that some would consider as being strictly scientific, such as the development of renewable energy technology. One might say that this state of things is not ideal. That may be true, however, the paralysis of […]

“I’m a boring speaker and I like it that way…I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is…People are interested in the issues, and they’re interested in the issues because they are important.” -Noam Chomsky   A good writer can write about any mundane thing and make it seem interesting. Similarly, any good […]

The great artist Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, a mistress above all masters, are laboring in vain.” The developing field of biomimicry seeks to learn from “the world’s greatest teacher” by modeling technology after organism’s unique features.  This form of engineering is now being applied […]

  Transitioning to clean renewable energy must be done in a matter that does not jeopardize American national security interests. Although this transition must be viewed as a step toward a more secure nation in its self, there are serious risks that must be evaluated and dealt with before offshore renewable energy can become a […]

Wind turbines are thought to be one of the (potentially) most successful aspects of renewable energy available, given the current state of technology and economic conditions. Some of the largest wind turbines in the United States are located throughout California while researchers in the Outer Banks, just as an example, are struggling to get permits […]

The need to transition to clean renewable energy source is a daunting yet pressing challenge facing the entire globe. As society continues to become more industrialized our demand for energy only increases. Throughout the entire 20th century our solution to rising demand for energy was a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Today, in the context […]

For the last two decades, Germany, with their feed-in tariffs, has been seen as a forerunner in the use of renewable and alternative energy technologies. However, after the tragic meltdown of the nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, Germany has been under intense pressure to shut down their nuclear energy program within a decade […]