by Bill Schlesinger As many policy groups—such as Maine’s Climate Council—try to grapple with effective responses to the ongoing global changes in climate, interest has focused on harvesting vegetation as…
by Bill Schlesinger Futile attempt to avoid airborne plastics With some 350 million tons of plastic produced each year, it is not surprising that some of it escapes to the…
CO 2 rising by Bill Schlessinger In the face of the inexorable rise in atmospheric CO2, widespread observations of long-term warming trends, and intransigent policy makers in the face of…
by Bill Schlesinger Hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) has become a standard practice for the production of oil and gas, not just from the shale-gas areas, such as the Marcellus shale…
by Bill Schlesinger Science is facing a deepening crisis in America. Despite our best efforts to increase funding for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education to train a new…
by Bill Schlesinger Thirty years ago, a NASA scientist, Dave Rind, published a paper showing the enhanced likelihood of droughts with global warming. His view was prescient. Rind reasoned…
by Chuck Cannon Over the past couple of centuries, we have witnessed a dramatic decline in wildlife populations (1, 2) and the extent of natural areas (3), with an increasing…
by Bill Schlesinger Along the mid-coast of California, amidst carefully protected ranches of Silicon Valley executives, one finds rolling hills of oak trees. A few years ago, with colleagues from…
by Bill Schlesinger Hot town, summer in the cityBack of my neck getting dirty and grittyThe Lovin’ Spoonful, 1966 We may be entering a vicious circle—what scientists call a positive…
Methane is a strong absorbent of infrared (heat) radiation leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, and thus implicated in the ongoing global warming of our planet. After a lull in the 1990s,…