Stories by David Wogan

Well, it's time for me bid y'all farewell. It's crazy to think that three years have already gone by. I started contributing to Plugged In shortly after I completed graduate school, and I hope that you've enjoyed the posts.

You've likely faced the question: "paper or plastic?" Clearly the paper bag is the better option, right? Or is it? In a TED Talk, Leyla Acaroglu has a challenge for us.

The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University has a new exhibit that tells the story of offshore drilling and the 41st President’s previous life as an oilman.

Post Carbon Institute has an incredibly detailed (and gorgeous!) map of all US shale oil and gas wells (they count 63,000 through June 2012 using data from Drilling Info).

There’s a new resource for researchers on residential energy usage called Wiki Energy, which is a new initiatve from Austin, Texas-based Pecan Street Project.

In a post at ThinkProgress, Joe Romm throws a wet blanket on the idea of exporting US natural gas in an attempt to curb Russia’s energy leverage, saying “Sadly, few seem to care about diminishing the threat posed by climate change, since it has become increasingly clear that LNG would make things worse.” The issue [...]

The situation unfolding in Crimea is an interesting example of energy’s role in geopolitics. In Ukraine, the major energy story is consumption and transportation of Russian natural gas.

The impact of domestic oil and natural gas production has seen a significant uptick in the past several years. The rush of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in "tight" shale plays around the country is largely responsible for a resurgence of U.S.

CAFE standards are working, at least according to a research note from the University of Michigan. The graph below shows the average sales-weighted MPGs by month and model year.

I never tire of satellite images, and especially those of North Korea at night. Take a look at the latest image by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

For many of the 7 million Syrians who have fled their homes amid civil war, having access to clean and reliable electricity in refugee camps is not guaranteed.

Humor me and lose yourself in this depth map.

The following map shows just how many loading and unloading terminals have been constructed since 2010: Loading facilities (red dots) are located throughout the major tight oil plays in North America, including the Bakken formation in North Dakota and the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB).

One of the best perks about this gig is sharing this space with some of the smartest and enthusiastic scientists and communicators. I want to point you towards a video of a talk by our own Sheril Kirshenbaum that she gave at the TEDxCongress Ave event last Fall in Austin, TX.

What happens to Olympic host cities after the torch has gone out?

Cheap energy from sunlight could displace kerosene in African villages

Texas. We’re known for big hats, presidents, and oil and gas. So it might suprise you that when the Energy Information Administration asks “how much #windpower is produced in each state?” the Lone Star Statecomes out on top.

Much like the Los Angeles basin, China’s Sichuan Basin traps haze and smog. NASA’s Terra satellite capture the following image of a hazy Sichuan Basin on January 23, 2014: The Sichuan Basin is home to many cities, including the province’s capital Chengdu, a city with more than 14 million residents.

A new set of performance standards could inject a higher degree of safety and accountability into the fracking industry. The Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) has developed a set of 15 standards that oil and gas drillers can adopt in their operations (a PDF of the standards is here).

Even as the US market for coal appears to be declining (first due to market pressure from cheaper natural gas and now EPA GHG rules), US exports of its coal abroad has been a sore spot.

Mount Diablo Unified School District, which sits just east of San Francisco and Oakland, partnered with SunPower Corp to install the worlds largest solar installation for a school district.

As many in North America are learning, the health of the arctic affects weather in warmer, southern parts of the continent. Mark Fischetti does a great job explaining the polar vortex and how the belt that essentially keeps cold air tucked away up in the arctic is loosening, resulting in the historic and extreme cold [...]

Remember these guys from a couple days ago? This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice Donald J.

One takeaway from the Administrations 2014 Climate Action Report is that for a host of reasons, some planned and some by luck/market forces, the US is in a better place in greenhouse gas emissions than it was in 2005.