Dave Roberts had a wonderful post on August 30th, 2013 titled “Hope and Fellowship”, which addresses the question “Is there any hope? Or are we just f*cked?” Here’s his brilliant summary: And really, what else are we going to do? Remember, there is no “too late” here, no
Read moreI just encountered another example of how re-imagining the way we deliver services can enable very low-cost access to communications. My friend RJ Honicky wrote a paper in 2007 with colleagues at UC Berkeley describing how a “voice message mostly” mobile phone system could lead to improved equipment utilization, better
Read moreI visited my friend Saul Griffith at Other Lab on August 9th, 2013. The lab is housed in the old Schoenstein & Sons pipe organ factory in San Francisco. It’s a beautiful building, with its offices and hallways straight out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. I loved visiting the
Read moreMy old Kindle 2 gave up the ghost awhile back, and I finally got around to doing something about it. I ended up getting a refurbished PaperWhite, which works fine, and has much longer battery life than the Kindle 2 (thanks to progress in battery, screen, communications, and computing technologies,
Read moreJoe Romm at Climate Progress was good enough to post my analysis of the recent claim that your iPhone uses as much electricity as two refrigerators. This issue was highlighted in Friday’s edition of NPR’s Marketplace program, which thankfully didn’t fall into the false balance trap that
Read moreAdriene Hill of NPR’s marketplace program did a nice job describing the fridge vs. iPhone story today (“No, your phone doesn’t use as much electricity as a refrigerator”). My favorite part of the story was my friend Bruce Nordman’s analogy about the three headed cat: “If I
Read moreMark P. Mills has reappeared, and remarkably is repeating some of the same wild claims that we debunked last time (circa 1999-2003). As a public service, I’ve listed the most important documents summarizing the previous controversy for the benefit of media folks and other interested parties who otherwise would
Read moreSome colleagues and I, all of whom were Google Science Communication Fellows in 2011, wrote and posted at Climate Science Watch an open letter to Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google about their fundraiser for Senator James Inhofe. You can read the letter here. Four of us also wrote
Read moreThis Apple patent points to the future of power management for mobile computing devices. Devices will use context-specific information (like estimating how far you are from your destination using the GPS in your phone) to help decide when to reduce power use and extend battery life. Smart everything, getting smarter
Read moreBecause of the recent heat wave around here, I’ve been trying to figure out how to keep our house from heating up so much. I started using a Maverick Laser Surface Thermometer to learn more about heat flows and temperatures inside the house. It retails for about $35 on
Read moreThis article gives a tidy summary of the key factors affecting the greenhouse gas emissions associated with data centers, and helps readers prioritize how best to reduce those emissions. The three areas for improvement are the efficiency of the information technology (IT) equipment (servers, storage, and communications), the efficiency of
Read moreBarack Obama, Climate Hawk! More context at http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/25/2213341/invest-divest-obama-goes-full-climate-hawk-in-speech-unveiling-plan-to-cut-carbon-pollution/
Read moreFor many months I struggled with what to think about the Keystone pipeline. On the one hand, my friends in the Administration and elsewhere argued persuasively (at least on first blush) that the oil from the tar sands would be sold one way or another, so whether the pipeline was
Read moreThe US State Department recently delayed their final decision about the Keystone XL pipeline, [1] which would transport heavy oil from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to US refineries on the Gulf coast. Proponents of the pipeline claim that it will create many US jobs and improve US national security,
Read moreit was an honor to follow Al Gore on stage at Google’s “How Green is the Internet?” summit last Thursday. I worked hard on the talk, and it’s posted (along with Gore’s talk, some “rapid fire” research talks, and a wonderfully passionate talk from Eric Schmidt, for
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