Common Science

I should mention that at the outset I am not intentionally selecting topics that will lead to the rather pessimistic columns I often write.  I just pick a topic, follow the data, and see where it leads.  I started this series...

“If we could ever competitively, at a cheap rate, get freshwater from salt water, that would be in the long-range interest of humanity and would dwarf any other scientific accomplishments” – President John F. Kennedy April...

After last week’s hiatus, I am picking back up with my series on water.   If you want to start at the beginning check out “Water Part I: Is God a Mathematician?”   Part II was going to be about the desalination of water.  As I...

Last week I started a series about water with “Water Part I: Is God a Mathematician”.  I started working on Part II, but find I am too saddened by the loss of 59 lives in a dust explosion in an iPad factory in China to write...

In the fall of 1983 I was applying to go to college and was invited to come to the University of Delaware to write an essay to help determine if I would be admitted to the honors program.  For my younger readers, 1983 was just...

For hundreds of years European explorers searched the world for El Dorado, a city of gold.  In fact, El Dorado was waiting for them underground in the form of liquid petroleum.  Petroleum is so amazing that it’s hard to wrap...

It appears that the North Carolina General Assembly is going to take up the issue of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” again in this legislative session.  I’ll leave the details of the political process to other fora, but I...

Last week in “2012 The Year Without a Winter” I explained that in order to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide to 450 parts per million, the goal set during the 2009 UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, we need to leave half of the...

When I moved here from Pennsylvania 11 years ago, this is what I was hoping winter would be like.  Maybe sweater weather in the morning and the evening, bracketing crisp, cool 55 oF afternoons.  Having been here for a while now,...

This is the final installment of a four-part series on changes I expect to see in the Chapelboro by 2050 as a result of reduced resource availability.  To start at the beginning check out “Life on Two Wheels”, “A Farewell to...