Ramez Naam's Blog, page 8

Nexus on Sale for $2.99 on Kindle – One of NPR’s Best Books of 2013

Amazon currently has Nexus - recently named one of the Best Books of 2013 by NPR – on sale for just $2.99 on Kindle.  Not sure how long this will last. "The only serious successor to Michael Chrichton." - Scott Harrison … Continue reading →

Arctic Sea Ice: Less in November 2013 than Summers Before 2006

(This is a correction of a previous post that stated that there was less Arctic sea ice in December than in any summer before 2007. That post used a PIOMAS anamoly graph, which was not appropriate.)   The Arctic is melting. That's a … Continue reading →

Arctic Sea Ice: Less in December 2013 than Summers Before 2007

The Arctic is melting. That's a problem. Ice reflects 90% of the energy of the sunlight that hits it. The dark waters of the Arctic Ocean below it absorb 90% of that energy instead. If the sea ice is gone in the … Continue reading →

Nexus: One of NPR’s Best Books of 2013!

I'm delighted to find that NPR has named Nexus as one of their Best Books of 2013.   It's on both the Science Fiction / Fantasy list and the Mystery / Thriller list.  On the SFF list it's up there with books … Continue reading →

Decoupling Growth From Energy and Carbon

Is it possible to grow an economy without increasing pollution? Without increasing resource use? As I've posted, Americans already use less oil and less water than in previous decades. Here's a more macro-scale view – US per-capita GDP over the … Continue reading →

The Ozone Layer Success Story

The most powerful success story I know of in global environmentalism is the ozone layer.  It took the signing of an international agreement over the fierce objections of industry and paid skeptics but we dramatically reduced emissions of CFCs, the coolant chemicals that … Continue reading →

Less Water, Less Oil

Here in the US, we consume less oil per person and less water per person than we have in decades. Oil consumption per person per year, from the IEA.  (The last bullet point is their projection for 2030): Water withdrawals … Continue reading →

Do We Eat Oil? Farms Are More Energy Efficient Than Ever

A common refrain one hears about modern farming in the US is that it's too energy intensive.  However, data from the USDA shows that US farms use only half as much energy per unit of farm output as they did … Continue reading →

Can We Feed the World?

By 2050, the FAO projects that we'll need to increase global food production by 70% to meet rising food demand.  Most of that, as Jon Foley has noted, is not from population growth, but rather from increasingly meat rich diets … Continue reading →

Solar Power Prices Dropping Faster Than Ever

In 2011, I wrote a piece for Scientific American on the exponential price decline in solar power. I haven't had a chance to fully update that piece, but two quick notes.   First, the price decline in solar cost per … Continue reading →