Earth Wise

The X Prize Foundation provides financial incentives for innovative solutions to various technical challenges.   Topics have ranged from developing spacecraft to trying to create a real-world version of the Star Trek tricorder.   Last year, the foundation launched a $20 million challenge to come up with technologies by the year 2020 that turn carbon dioxide captured […]

It seldom rains in the United Arab Emirates.  Some areas of the UAE receive less than five inches of rain annually, and often little to none at all during the summer months when temperatures can climb above 110 degrees Fahrenheit.  These conditions have led to water security concerns particularly in Dubai, a blossoming international destination, […]

For the past 17 years, the American Lung Association has analyzed data from official air quality monitors to compile the State of the Air report.  The State of the Air 2016, which was released late last month, revealed some troubling statistics about the health of the air here in the United States.  According to the […]

California leads the nation in the use of solar energy with well over half the country’s solar electric capacity. The state is the home of several of the largest thermal solar generating plants in the world and between those and multiple utility-scale photovoltaic plants, California utilities get more than 5% of their power from the […]

Each year, more than 25 million shipping containers enter the U.S.  All too often, highly destructive forest pests are lurking among their imported goods. Wood boring insects arrive as stowaways in wood packaging, such as pallets and crates. Other forest pests and pathogens hitchhike in on foreign-reared plants bound for American nurseries. According to Gary […]

The introduction of the Tesla 3 and the 400,000 advanced orders for the vehicle have put the spotlight on electric cars recently.  But despite all the buzz, electric cars are sill only a tiny piece of the US car market:  about 0.66 percent last year. In terms of absolute numbers, the four largest global markets […]

In 2010, an explosion on the BP-owned Deepwater Horizon drilling rig released more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  Some of the oil was recovered, burned, or dispersed at sea, while some washed up onto the shorelines of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.  Now researchers believe the largest oil […]

We hear a great deal about electric cars these days.  Will people buy them?  Are they worth it?  And, of course, there is the tremendous buzz surrounding Tesla’s forthcoming moderately-priced car.   But there is also lots of activity in electrifying larger vehicles, including garbage trucks, city buses, and medium-sized trucks used by freight companies like […]

We have talked about the growing problem of toxic algal blooms on a number of occasions.  The increasing occurrence of these blooms has been associated with rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels as well as the presence of wastewater nutrients and agricultural fertilizers in rivers, lakes and reservoirs.  The most notable incident occurred in the […]

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar power are getting cheaper all the time and are, in many places, competing head to head on price with traditional fossil fuel generation.  The ultimate goal is to replace polluting energy sources entirely, but even under the most optimistic scenarios, fossil fuel plants aren’t just going to disappear […]