Jack Dini

Health Aspects of Alcohol

There are a lot of mixed messages about alcohol. On the one hand, moderate amounts have been linked to health benefits. On the other hand, it is addictive and highly toxic when we drink too much of it.

Whiskey's Complex Chemistry

Whiskeys contain hundreds of compounds, including fatty acids, esters, alcohols and aldehydes, in a wide range of concentrations. The most important flavors in a whiskey come from the raw materials, the distillation process, and the maturation. ¹

Germany' Failing Energy Policy

Germans like to think of themselves as the most environmentally friendly people on earth. They see their sophisticated recycling programs, their love of forests, and, most recently the country's drive to replace both nuclear and coal-fired power production with renewable sources—the so-called Energiewende,-- or 'energy turn' as evidence of their strong environmental consciousness, especially compared to top polluters like the United States and China. ¹

Concerns About Algae

Solar's Dirt and Toxic Issues

Solar's Dirty Secret

Solar Industry Financial Woes

EU Carbon Capture Project A Massive Financial Failure

Ten years ago EU leaders said that a technology called carbon capture and sequestration, also known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) should be deployed with new fossil-fuel power plants by 2020. ¹

Wind Energy Issues

The drumbeat for a fossil fuel free energy utopia continues. But few have pondered how we will supposedly generate 25 billion megawatts of total current global electricity demand using just renewable energy, wind turbines, for instance. For starters, we're talking about some 830 million gigantic 500 foot tall turbines requiring a land area of some 12.5 billion acres. That's more than twice the size of North America, all the way through Central America reports Paul Driessen. ¹

Wind Speed Is Slowing Down

Worldwide wind speeds have slowed down by about half a kilometer per hour (0.3 miles per hour) since the 1960s according to researchers. ³¹ The phenomenon is known as 'stilling', and scientists are not sure why it is happening. They speculate that it may have something to do with urbanization, climate change and cumulus clouds. But then researchers admit: “Or it could be due to aging wind speed instruments producing inaccurate results.”

Surprising Pollution From Trees

Forests have been called the lungs of the Earth because growing trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and replace it with oxygen. Planting trees is often touted as a strategy to make cities greener, cleaner and healthier.

Wood Burning Pollution

The use of wood for electricity generation and heat in modern technologies has grown rapidly in recent years. For its supporters, it represents a relatively cheap and flexible way of supplying renewable energy with benefits to global climate and to forest industries.

Hockey Stick Revisited

The hockey stick is the nickname given to a temperature graph that became the central icon of the 2001 publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It purported to show that temperature had been roughly stable from the year 1000 AD until the 20th century—after which it began to shoot up dramatically. The flattish part of the line reminded people of the long handle of an ice hockey stick at rest, while the uptick resembled the blade, reports Donna Laframboise. ¹

Notes On Tricky Use Of Math

A bat and ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Almost everyone who reads this question will have an immediate impulse to answer '10 cents.' I surely did.

Renewables and Electricity Prices

Wind energy is 'free' but countries with the most wind power are also the most likely to get to the top of the Prize Pool for exorbitant electricity prices. It's not even close.

Temperature Record Shenanigans

If you heard that a temperature record had been set, how long would you expect that temperature to hold: 1 hour, 30 minutes, 10 minutes,1 minute? In 2008, Lin and Hubbard argued it should be 7 minutes, that even a 5 minute averaging was not long enough to avoid some warming bias in maximums and cooling bias in minimals. ¹

Zinc- An Important Nutrient

You might know that zinc, element number 30 on the periodic table, is used for galvanizing iron and steel. Here are some things you might not know. Zinc is ubiquitous in our bodies and facilitates many functions that are essential for preserving life.

Concrete- Lots Of Activity

A single industry accounts for around 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. It produces a material so ubiquitous it is nearly invisible: cement. Cement is the primary ingredient in concrete, which in turn forms the foundations and structures of buildings we live and work in, and the roads and bridges we drive on.

China's Drive For Global Resources

Across the globe, on nearly every continent, China is involved in a dizzying variety or resource extraction, energy, agricultural, and infrastructure projects—roads, railroads, hydro-power dams, mines—that are wrecking unprecedented damage to ecosystems and biodiversity reports, William Laurance. ¹

Coal Boom Worldwide

In a world where more than 1 billion people have no electricity and a much larger number live in deep energy poverty, only the fossil fuel industry has developed the ability to produce energy for electricity, fuel and heat for those in need. The politically popular alternatives, solar and wind, are expensive, unreliables that depend on reliable sources, mostly fossil fuels for life support reports Alex Epstein. ¹