If you need a good reason to compost your food waste, Kenneth Weiss provides it an article he wrote for Science magazine in May (Vancouver’s Green Dream, Science 20 May 2016, Vol. 352, Issue 6288, pp. 918-921, DOI: 10.1126/science.352.6288.918). Weiss describes Vancouver’s efforts to combat climate change, among other environmental initiatives, by capturing methane generated in … More Compost.
The following letter appeared in the January 1, 2016 edition of the News and Observer, Raleigh, NC News and Observer Letter It’s deja vu all over again reading George Will (“Another false ‘turning point’,” N&O, 12/17) and Charles Krauthammer (“Obama’s legacy of fiction,” N&O, 12/18) whine about efforts to address climate change. Neither one considers … More The Ozone Protocol: A Climate Change Precedent
Several weeks ago there was a big splash in the media about astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) eating lettuce they had grown in Earth orbit. Having once spent ten weeks on a faculty fellowship at Kennedy Space Center working on potential problems associated with growing plants in space, I was curious about the … More Plants in Space
I’ve enjoyed Air & Space magazine for years, but an in-depth article by Mark Betancourt in the August 2015 issue goes above and beyond. I expect informative technology reviews and personal interest articles sating my inborn curiosity in aviation and space developments, but this story is one of the best science reviews I’ve read in … More HURRICANE GENESIS: A science review by Mark Betancourt in Air & Space Smithsonian
One of two Prius’s (Prii?) owned by my daughter and her husband! As the owner of two hybrid vehicles (a Prius and a Honda Civic hybrid), I take exception with Donald van der Vaart and his comparison of North Carolina to a Prius among old gas-guzzling Cadillacs. I love the old north state, and we’ve … More We (North Carolina that is) can do better!
As a general aviation pilot, a story about increasing conflicts among fliers sharing the skies overhead carries an intrinsic interest with a safety overtone. As a biologist and a birder, realizing the story is about wildlife-human aerial interactions awakens quite a different interest, still with a safety overtone. Sergio Lambertucci, a wildlife ecologist at the … More AIRSPACE CROWDING
Luna moth resting on a screen at the Len Foote Hike Inn in north Georgia This was one of a few luna moths we saw while we were hiking this May in Amicalola Falls State Park in the north Georgia mountains. With apparently little to do in the daylight hours, these huge specimens mostly just … More The Evolution of Aerial Combat
The U.S. Department of Energy has for the second time decided to terminate its financial support of the attempt to demonstrate carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The concept of “clean coal” depends on the ability to capture and inactivate or permanently store the carbon dioxide emissions and other contaminants otherwise released when coal is burned to produce … More CLEAN COAL: A COLLAPSE OF CHICANERY?
There’s a new documentary coming out next year called, Aviation: The Invisible Highway. The trailer claims that…“When airplanes were invented, their purpose was simple, to take us faster and farther.” I disagree. Airplanes were invented because people wanted to go up into the air. They wanted to fly above the ground. They wanted to see … More AVIATION: The Invisible Highway – a review of the trailer!
The video opens with the following quote: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. —Frederick Douglass This statement and its author tell us much about the documentary that follows. The focus is on action, in keeping with the title itself, Disruption. The target of the action is, clearly in … More DISRUPTION: A review of the climate change documentary
this view of earth 