Bob Higgins, Author at CleanTechnica

About Bob Higgins

Lifelong liberal of the Tom Paine wing. Marine Vietnam vet. Have worked as a photographer, cab driver, bartender, carpenter, cabinetmaker, writer and editor. Now retired on a Veterans Disability program I spend my time writing, and complaining about politics and the environment.

We’re In The Record Books, But There’s No Trophy

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Bob Higgins

Greenland surface melt measurements from three satellites on July 8 (left panel) and July 12 (right panel), 2012. Source: NASA, 2012

We set another record last year, but not for the fastest mile, the most home runs, or a quintuple axel, so don’t call Guinness. We may want to keep this one quiet. The record is for blithely pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at alarming rates in spite of four decades of increasingly dire warnings from the very people most qualified to recognize this type of threat, climate scientists. The World Meteorological Orginazation (WMO) says … Read More

More Oil From Macondo?

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Bob Higgins

Oil Spill From BP's Deepwater Horizon Macondo Field Disaster

The reports come at us every month, from the Gulf, Alaska, the North Sea, small towns in Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania and from the Yellowstone River. There is no place on earth that these greaseheads will not despoil and are not actively and zealously engaged in destroying. Make a note that these are only the events that get reported or otherwise discovered.

Good Morning Irene

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Bob Higgins

Hurricane Irene Beaufort, North Carolina Coordinates: 34°43′15″N 76°39′9″W

It’s 4AM on Saturday and I’m up early. When you cant go back to sleep in the 21st century you turn the on computer, then the news.

According to NOAA, and verified visually on Google Earth, Hurricane Irene is centered at 33.7N and 77.5W which puts it in position to munch Beaufort, North Carolina just a degree or so north and west at 4°43′15″N 76°39′9″W according to Wikipedia.

Fire, Water, Wind or Sunshine, a Watt is a Watt

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Bob Higgins

Unicorn Tears, An Approved Hippie Energy Source

I sometimes think that many of us have a deep seated mania that causes us to believe that for any substance to be an effective source of energy it must be something that can be burned. Not only must it be combustible, the substance must be hard to get. This manic belief requires that the energy source must be searched out and dug up or clawed from the earth at great trouble and expense.

What’s more, to be a credible source the fuel must be retrieved from the bowels of the earth or the deepest depths of the ocean by intrepid explorers with fedoras and a five day growth of manly stubble, all else is considered to be alchemy

WTF: What’s This Fracking?

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Bob Higgins

Hydraulic Fracturing of Shale Gas Deposits

Reading “Looking for Gas in All the Wrong Places” a piece in Monday’s NYT by Stanley Fish I found a calm, collected, depiction of an equally calm and collected town meeting in Andes, N.Y. where the subject on the agenda was “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing of shale gas deposits.

Calm, rational, and civil aren’t normally descriptive of a gathering when fracking, the subject that is bitterly dividing communities from North Texas and Colorado to Pennsylvania, and from West Virginia to New York is under discussion. Fracking is a national and local hot potato.

More Drilling in the Gulf, The Death of a Thousand Cuts

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Bob Higgins

Map of the northern Gulf of Mexico showing the nearly 4,000 active oil and gas platforms. NOAA Photo

There are about 4000 active oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, a fact I bumped into while researching an article on BP’s Macondo field Deepwater Horizon disaster last year.

In addition, there are more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells that dot the Gulf, actually it’s much more like a blanket.

This morning I ran across a map and a video by tsinn at The Sword Press in which he plots these wells by time and position as well as location as in the NOAA map above.

Fukushima To Do List: Take a Walk, Lunch, 100k Chest X Rays, Pick Up Kids

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Bob Higgins

There’s not a lot of information coming out of Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) or the Japanese government regarding the severity of the ongoing meltdown at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear facility.
What we are getting is alarming and according to an Al Jazeera story yesterday Japanese scientists and doctors are sounding the alarm.

Big Coal: Making Mountains Even Better

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Bob Higgins

Coal provides jobs. The jobs are dirty, they produce a product that’s harmful to the planet, hazardous to the health and welfare of the workers and their neighbors, but… hey, they’re jobs.
Besides, some of those jobs involve improving our mountains. They blow the tops off them, and haul away the coal, leaving flat tops, suitable for landing pads, parking lots, Nascar racing, or Appalachian soccer matches.

An Ocean of Oil, a Toxic Brew

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Bob Higgins

Another oil spill, the worst in the North Sea in a decade according to several media sources. I didn’t bother to call Donald Trump when news of Shell’s North Sea oil spill broke on this side of the pond. He’s not taking my calls.
I would have asked him if he found it ironic that a week after publicly berating Scotland for wanting to site a wind farm off the coast of his golf development near Aberdeen, Shell dumped more than 55,000 gallons of oil into the North Sea out beyond where the wind farm would stand.

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