Scientific American

Fracking Can Be Done Safely, but Will It Be?

Fri, 17 May 2013 06:00:00 EST

Out of sight (and smell), natural gas slowly bubbled up into Norma Fiorentino’s private water well near the town of Dimock in northeastern Pennsylvania--in the heart of the new fracking boom in the U.S. Then, on New Year's Day 2009, when a mechanical pump flicked on and provided the spark, Fiorentino's backyard exploded. She and many others blame the blast on fracking --the colloquial name for the natural gas drilling process that combines horizontal drilling and the fracturing of shale deep underground with high-pressure water to create a path for gas to flow back up the well. [More]

400 PPM: Can Artificial Trees Help Pull CO2 from the Air?

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:01:00 EST

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have touched 400 parts per million for the first time in at least 800,000 years. The jagged saw-toothed line of the Keelings' father-and-son measurements climbed above that milestone briefly this month before the budding growth of the Northern Hemisphere's spring began sucking CO2 back out of the sky. But human greenhouse gas pollution looks set to continue to rise--and photosynthetic plants on land or at sea can only do so much. As greenhouse gas levels increase further, could machines help wash the skies of the excess CO2? [More]

Amazon Be Dammed: Deforestation Undermines Future Viability of Brazil s Hydropower Projects

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:30:00 EST

The Amazon Basin is the epicenter of the world’s hydropower plants--the same gushing rains that give the region its lush foliage make it a prime destination for developers seeking to capitalize on this allegedly renewable energy source. But the long-term sustainability of these projects, which use the natural flow of water to generate electricity, is now under scrutiny.

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Obama Administration Announces 3 Advanced-Manufacturing Innovation Institutes

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:15:00 EST

From Nature magazine

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Interior Secretary: Fracking Regulations Will Be Based on Best Science

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:00:00 EST

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U.S. Nuclear Warheads Set to Get a Facelift

Tue, 07 May 2013 17:00:00 EST

When he took office in 2009, US President Barack Obama bolstered efforts to secure nuclear materials around the globe. That spring, speaking in Prague, he said that he would push Congress to ratify a long-pending treaty to ban nuclear testing. By 2010, he had reached an agreement with Russia to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in both countries’ arsenals to historic lows.

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U.K. Stockpiles Plutonium in Hopes of Future Energy

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:30:00 EST

LONDON – Britain's plutonium stockpile, the biggest in the world, has just grown by another three tonnes as the German and Dutch governments have handed over their stores, apparently glad to be rid of it.

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Remember the BP Oil Spill? Malformed Fish Do

Sun, 05 May 2013 09:00:08 EST

You’ve heard of the canary in the coalmine. Well, a species called the Gulf killifish might be the fish in the oil well.

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Airplane to Fly across U.S. Powered by Sunshine [Slide Show]

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:01:00 EST

The goal is to fly around the world using no fuel other than sunlight . But first a prototype of the solar plane to circumnavigate the globe will fly across the U.S.--taking off on May 3 and potentially proving that airplanes can fly long distances on nothing more than sunshine. [More]

Cool It: The Internet May Be Too Hot For Data Centers to Handle

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:00:00 EST

The Internet may not consume nearly as much environmentally unfriendly fossil fuel as airplanes or automobiles, but the growth of cloud-based services offered by Apple, Netflix and others is forcing data centers to provide greater speed and more storage capacity. All of this size and speed comes at a price. Data centers generate a lot of heat that has to be whisked away by power-hungry air- and liquid-cooling systems to keep the Internet's engines from burning themselves out.

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Top 10 Green Buildings Improve Surrounding Environment and Users Health

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:05:00 EST

Most paragons of architectural greatness distinguish themselves by an ability to stand out from their surroundings. The American Institute of Architects, by contrast, has just recognized a handful of buildings for their capacity to blend in.

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Recommended: The Power Surge

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST

The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future [More]

Electric Vehicle Market Looks for a Recharge

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:00:00 EST

U.S. electric car pioneer Fisker Automotive once posted a manifesto on its Web site: “New isn’t easy.” Not for them, it wasn’t. Now their site is defunct and the company is scrambling to find a funder or face bankruptcy.

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Gut Microbe Makes Diesel Biofuel

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 06:00:00 EST

Welding bits and pieces from various microbes and the camphor tree into the genetic code of Escherichia coli has allowed scientists to convince the stomach bug to produce hydrocarbons, rather than sickness or more E. coli . The gut microbe can now replicate the molecules, more commonly known as diesel, that burn predominantly in big trucks and other powerful moving machines. [More]

Is Sustainability Even Possible?

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 10:00:08 EST

Some questions to ponder on Earth Day: how much of an environmental problem is the growing human population ? And is the problem too many people or the throwaway culture of too many things ?

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Energy-Harvesting Street Tiles Generate Power from Pavement Pounder

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EST

PARIS--On April 7, 2013, Kenya’s Peter Some won the 37th Paris Marathon with a time of 2:05:38. A surprise winner, Some missed the event record by only 27 seconds, thus depriving him of a place in running history. He need not have worried; unknown to him and thousands of fellow marathoners, they were all nonetheless part of a historic event. As they ran across the Avenue des Champs Élysées and thumped their feet on 176 special tiles laid on a 25-meter stretch, the athletes generated electricity.

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Obama s 2014 Science Budget Proposal Revitalizes STEM Education, Reduces Environmental Conservation

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:40:00 EST

Among the winners in Pres. Barack Obama’s 2014 federal budget: the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Education and National Science Foundation (NSF). The losers include agribusiness and the Environmental Protection Agency. Obama’s plan, announced April 11, is less a vision for a progressive science agenda than a reflection of political reality--specifically, the fact that he still must work with a conservative Congress. The budget gives a boost to science education and research, long-standing administration priorities. In a nod to fiscal conservatives it trims administrative costs and slashes subsidies for agribusiness. On the matter of fossil fuels, however, it largely maintains the status quo, preserving funding for drilling and fracking. Here’s a quick list of winners, losers and how the new White House budget would affect them.

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Keystone XL Oil Pipeline Exacerbates Climate Change

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:30:00 EST

The Keystone XL Pipeline would move enough tar sands oil to result in another 181 million metric tons of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere yearly. A new report prepared by environmental group Oil Change International (OCI) analyzes what the climate change impacts of the proposed pipeline might be. [More]

Behind the Numbers on Energy Return on Investment

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:20:00 EST

When I proposed an article to Scientific American on energy return-on-investment , also known as EROI, I didn't realize how much legwork would be involved in gathering the numbers needed for an infographic to accompany the story.

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How to Measure the True Cost of Fossil Fuels (preview)

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:14:00 EST

Canada's tar sand projects sprawl across 600 square kilometers of northeastern Alberta. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called the industrial effort to extract oil from the deposits “an enterprise of epic proportions, akin to the building of the pyramids or China's Great Wall. Only bigger.”

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