I am an award-winning journalist writing primarily about the environment and energy. I’ve been writing for Scientific American since November 2005 and have written on subjects ranging from astronomy to zoology for both the Web site and magazine. I’ve been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999—long enough to be cynical but not long enough to be depressed. I am the host of the 60-Second Earth podcast, a contributor to the Instant Egghead video series and author of a children’s book on bullet trains. I also write for publications ranging from Good to Yale e360, speak on radio shows such as WNYC’s The Takeaway, NHPR’s Word of Mouth, and PRI’s The World as well as host the duPont-Columbia award winning documentary “Beyond the Light Switch” for PBS. I also happen to think Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species is a surprisingly good read.
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Dear David,
Im a Master Student from Germany and I am currently writting about China and how renewable energies can change their CO2 emissions. I came several times across your article “China’s Energy PARADOX, Scientific American Earth 3.0, 2008-1218:5″. Unfortunately it was nowhere available for free. If you could send your acticle to me that would be very kind. I will only use it for my paper and not publish it somewhere.
Your help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Tina Walther
Hi Tina,
Good luck with your project. Here are links to articles that discuss the same subject (and were condensed to form China’s Energy Paradox):
China’s Big Push for Renewable Energy
Can Coal and Clean Air Coexist in China?
The Price of Gas in China
Damming the Yangtze
The Answer to China’s Future Energy Demands May Be Blowing in the Wind
If these don’t give you what you need. Feel free to write me again and I’ll get you a PDF.
Hi David,
just read your latest Sci-Am contribution: ‘Will the world act’ and would like to send you pics – but don’t expect them to come through in this window – pics of carbon addict denial:
[]
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/programme.php
Shellnhuber’s graph describes the 100% by 2020 reduction needed by countries like the US and Canada with 20 tonne plus per capita annual emissions. The 100% emission reduction by 2020 is in order to have a 60-70% chance of staying below 2C, the presently agreed upon precautionary ceiling to protect against dangerous, uncontrollable, runaway warming.
This is not just his opinion but the product of several key papers on a global carbon budget published over the past couple of years: Meinshausen, Allen, the WGBU (Shellnhuber) paper, and the Anderson-Bows paper commenting upon what we’ve learned about carbon budgets.
If you have high per-capita emissions (plus 20 tonnes) and the global per-capita emission rate over the next century to stay below 450 ppm / 2 C is somewhere below 2 tonnes annually then you are using a decades worth of your 21st century budget each year of present emissions. Countries like the US, Canada and Australia will, at present emission rates, use up their whole carbon budget for the next century in just the next decade. Deep, immediate cuts are necessary.
The Bali target of 25% of 1990 levels by 2020 is today regarded as a big stretch, laughable now in these post-Copenhagen, Climategate times, but the actual science, the reality, is that to have only a 70% chance of staying under 450 ppm / 2C the bottom line is 100% by 2020.
But the Arctic is melting and with the possibility of potent latent positive feedbacks in a climate history where even small forcings have whipsawed climate in our past, there is a substantive scientific case that getting below 350 ppm fast – not just staying below 450 ppm – has to be our new precautionary bottom line. Climate change isn’t a slow, long term threat but tipping points that we are passing over today. Climate change is an emergency requiring urgent action.
Mark Lynas amongst others has described the dangers of increasing global temperatures by one, two, five or six degrees C. Two degrees is civilization threatening and six is probably extinction for most species including man. The history in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica is that an increase of global temperature by one or two degrees can with latent feedbacks lead to temperature increase past six degrees to major extinction events. A one degree increase is already happening. The melting Arctic ice cap will accelerate warming with albedo decrease and melting permafrost. The inter-generational ethics precautionary ceiling has arguably been exceeded.
So what level of emission reduction should we be making in 2010? And what actions should we be taking to reduce emissions?
http://www.countercurrents.org/henderson250310.htm
And, second pic, the presentation here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZyl0UPbjZBlZGd4Nm16empfMjIwY3pqcGZrY3Q&hl=en
If this picture of carbon addict denial interests, e-mail me back. Otherwise, good luck and thanks for your time,
Bill Gibsons, B.C.
We want update of this blog. Thanks!
Hey David, I’m doing an essay about ethanol and I need to do an interview with someone who knows a lot about the topic, could you help me out?
1. Do you think that eventually we will be able to use ethanol to completely replace regular gasoline, even by using other green materials?
2. What’s the cost of producing ethanol, does it balance itself out?
3. What kind of impact is using corn for fuel making on our food supplies?
If you could take a moment of your time to answer these questions for me, I would be very appreciative.
David,
We really enjouyed your 60 second SA update “Halloween Chocolate: More Trick Than Treat?”
We’d love to send you a treat for such a nice trick. Please drop me an email and let’s talk!
Daniel Scott
MEDIA MONSTER
for the Fearless Chocolate Co.
Hmm, I’m nervous dbiello [at] sciam.com.
Hello David,
You have written many great articles, but many of them are based upon the notion that carbon dioxide is causing climate change. Look at the file at http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/hertzberg.pdf. In that file about the lynching of carbon dioxide, Dr. Hertzberg shows that carbon dioxide cannot change Earth’s temperature because CO2 already blocks all 15-micron photons. Decreasing CO2, or increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has no effect on climate change!
Sincerely, R. Blakely.
Thanks Richard for reading and writing, and thanks for sending this link. Unfortunately, I think the work from Lavoisier on down pretty much disproves Hertzberg’s contention. In fact, you can do the test yourself in the lab, if you like.
I wish you would really look at Hertzberg’s work. It is more than just a theory. It is based on actual data. Carbon dioxide cannot block any more photons because all those photons are already blocked. More CO2 in the atmosphere will not alter Earth’s temperature now.
I did look at it (I always do). As far as I can tell, it’s nonsense. Fortunately for you and me both, the theory is testable–and is *not* backed by actual data. For a brief primer on all of this, try: http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/radiationbalance.htm
David, you are involved in the “lynching of CO2″ since you are calling Hertzberg’s work “nonsense”. As far as I can tell, you do not understand the physics, and so you are calling the work “nonsense”. Otherwise, you would offer a more scientific explanation of how CO2 can block more photons than it already does.
CO2 is used in microwave waveguides because it is so transparent to microwaves. CO2 only blocks two photon types. One of these it blocks totally already. Therefore, CO2 cannot cause climate change.
I was just wondering if you have ever had any articles pertaining to oil spills be published in a peer review journal, and if so which one(s). Thanks.
I’m a journalist, not a scientist. So all my articles appear in the popular press (like my employer Scientific American or other publications) not the scientific literature. Here’s a sampler from SA: http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=bp-gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-anniversary . Hope that helps!
Dear Mr. Biello,
Your latest piece on peak oil in Scientific American is useful, and is quoted with a link in communication to an Indiana media outlet concerning itself with a “NAFTA Superhighway.” I used to concern myself greatly with road fighting, but I’ve moved on to concentrating on other aspects of petroleum dependence such as the plastic plague. Here’s what I sent to the station for their show; I could find no other way of reaching you. – JL
Q: How can anyone square oil reality with the urge to build unsustainable new roads?
Putting aside that the scientific findings are overwhelming that we are in effect roasting the planet and upsetting its delicate balance, we need to admit and act as if oil and refined-product prices are high (and higher when subsidies are included), and supplies of oil are unreliable geopolitically. Plus, road building is damaging to ecosystems and means more roadkill of humans and animals.
The end of cheap, abundant oil means the end of economic growth. A new Scientific American article says, “A new analysis concludes that easily extracted oil peaked in 2005, suggesting that dirtier fossil fuels will be burned and energy prices will rise.” But that view assumes no collapse of the oil-based economy through major supply disruption can happen. Based on our experience in the 1970s’ oil shocks, now that peak oil has hit and society is unprepared with alternative fuels and materials, and the human population has mushroomed, it’s only reasonable to anticipate that in our lifetime we’ll see the house-of cards economy finished off for hapless consumers dependent on no end of polluting, toxic petroleum products.
Despite this “negative” view, there is great joy and hope in living car-free, closer to nature, and in community which we have lost as isolated materialists working for corporations and buying their questionable, unnecessary goods.
Background:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=has-peak-oil-already-happened
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/727/1/
Thanks for putting on the debate,
Jan Lundberg
independent oil industry analyst
founder, Alliance for a Paving Moratorium (now Culture Change)
Culture Change / Sail Transport Network
Mobile: 1-415-613-1936 Voicemail & fax: 1-215-243-3144
P.O. Box 3387, Santa Cruz, CA 95063 USA
http://CultureChange.org
http://SailTransportNetwork.com
______________________________
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Please tune into WTIU for this documentary. CARR co-founder Thomas Tokarski will be a panelist discussing I-69 after the broadcast.
You can submit questions NOW for the panel discussion. The e-mail address to submit questions is news@indianapublicmedia.org.
ARE WE THERE YET?
Thursday, January 26, 2012, at 8 PM
WTIU Public Television
WTIU/WFIU News presents a documentary about the various sides of the I-69 issue and explains the complications that INDOT has faced in its attempt to complete the corridor.
The documentary debuts on WFIU and WTIU at 8 p.m. 1/26. It will be followed by a half hour panel discussion moderated by WFIU/WTIU News Bureau Chief Sara Wittmeyer. Panelists include CARR Co-founder Thomas Tokarski, Daviess County Economic Development Corporation Executive Director, Ron Arnold and Bloomington/Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization member Richard Martin.
The live panel will take questions from the radio and TV audiences by phone, email, and through social media sites Facebook (facebook.com/interstate69) and Twitter (@INpubmedianews).
The Indiana Channel is carrying the documentary on 2/8/12 and 2/9/12. The documentary is also running on a number of other radio and television stations in other states.
~~~~~~~~~~
Thomas & Sandra Tokarski
CARR
PO Box 54
Stanford, IN 47463
carr@bluemarble.net
812-825-9555
800-515-6936
Hi Jan,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. It’s always nice to hear from readers! And feel free to leave this comment on the SA site as well, if you care to. Thanks again.
db
Hi! I thought this paper of mine might be of interest to you since you had previously written about ammonium sulfate and also since the paper proposes obtaining it from microalgae.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852411018219
I ejnoy reading your tweets, by the way.
Thanks! And thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the paper but I’m always interested in Haber-Bosch alternatives. Can you send me the paper?