Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations did a useful analysis last fall of the jobs the US could expect from drastically reducing oversight and expanding oil and gas drilling, both on and offshore. There are a few important insights from this work, the main one being that advocates
Read moreThe NY Times had an article Monday 16 January 2012 discussing how new technologies are challenging the role of traditional journals in science. Having free and open access to scientific results is one way to accelerate technological change . The old model of closed Journals for which people and institutions pay
Read moreClimate progress today once again summarizes the reasons why the alleged tradeoff between economic growth and environmental protection is really a false choice. This is a story that cannot be told enough times, given how plausible and pervasive people mistakenly think this tradeoff is. Here’s the beginning few paragraphs
Read moreBack on Dec 23rd, 2011, Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOM wrote about their top ten green stories of 2011 (as measured by number of clicks) and my post giving “Four reasons why cloud computing is efficient” was #3, which ain’t bad. The original post was published on July 24, 2011.
Read moreClimate progress points to a wonderful video showing the difference between climate and weather. Watch:
Read moreClimate Progress reports on Al Gore’s recent work promoting the use of video games to educate the public about climate science. This is yet another example of how information technology can be a game changer, and we’re only at the beginning of learning how to use it for
Read moreI chatted with Steve Lohr of the NY Times yesterday about the implications of the last six decades of progress in computing efficiency, and his blog today reflects our conversation nicely. He also talked about my new book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, which will be
Read moreLast Halloween (October 31, 2011) I gave a talk on the long-term trends in the efficiency of computing at Stanford, and I’m finally getting around to posting the link. On a related note, the trends I talk about in the Stanford talk were listed as #5 in the Popular
Read moreThe EPA today announced stricter rules on mercury emissions from power plants, which is an important development for those interested in greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because many of the older coal plants have no pollution controls and have social costs much higher than the value of the electricity they
Read moreMy book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, will be released on February 15, 2012. In Chapter 6, I discuss the power of mobile information and communication technology, and I reproduce that section below. The Power of Mobile ICT The performance of electronic computers has shown remarkable
Read moreSteve Lohr wrote a great article for the NY Times today titled “The Internet Gets Physical”, where he explores what he thinks is the next big thing (and I think he’s right). The article states: “…the protean Internet technologies of computing and communications are rapidly spreading beyond the lucrative
Read moreClimate Progress points to a Yale University study on adoption of photovoltaics (PVs) in residences, in which the time lag between installations falls as the number of installations increases. The authors call this a “peer” effect, in which a greater concentration of PV panels makes it even more likely that
Read moreThe NY Times.com article yesterday on the deluge of data from DNA sequencing raised a a couple of interesting issues for me. Here’s one important item I noticed: “The cost of sequencing a human genome — all three billion bases of DNA in a set of human chromosomes — plunged
Read moreThe Canadian Broadcasting Company just posted my interview for their “Spark” radio show, which is “an ongoing conversation about technology and culture, hosted by Nora Young”. It talks about our work on trends in the energy efficiency of computing over the past six decades, which I wrote about here and
Read moreThis interview followed a news piece reporting on why many companies are considering building data centers in Colorado Springs. The interviewer asked some good questions and the discussion illuminates some important aspects of data centers and electricity use. It’s a good non-technical introduction to these issues. Listen to it
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