Randy Simon
Randy Simon has over 30 years of experience in renewable energy technology, materials research, superconductor applications, and a variety of other technical and management areas. He has been an officer of a publicly-traded Silicon Valley company, worked in government laboratories, the aerospace industry, and at university research institutions. He holds a PhD in physics from UCLA. Dr. Simon has authored numerous technical papers, magazine articles, energy policy documents, online articles and blogs, and a book, and holds seven patents. He also composes, arranges and produces jazz music
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The Trump administration decided this year to stop updating a federal database that tracked the cost of extreme weather, compiling an annual list of hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage. The government had maintained that database since the 1990s, with data going back to 1980. Evidently, this information was deemed to be unimportant, or at least inconvenient. -
Coal has historically been the largest source of global electricity generation. For the first half of the 20th century, more than half of the world’s electricity came from coal power plants. Until the 1950s, most of the rest came from hydroelectric plants. Nuclear power grew rapidly from the 1950s up until a decline that began at the turn of the new century. Natural gas assumed a growing role that has continued to increase since then. Only in the past two decades have renewables like solar and wind power become significant contributors. -
Pakistan, a country with over a quarter billion people, is one that is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Pakistan, with 25% of its population living in poverty, contributes just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, it experiences increasingly frequent heatwaves, droughts, and catastrophic floods driven by the changing climate. -
A subpolar gyre is a large-scale ocean current system located at high latitudes created by a persistent region of low atmospheric pressure. These gyres circulate water in a cyclonic direction – counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. This circular motion of water drives the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich deep water to the surface, which plays an important role in regulating the climate in the higher latitudes as well as the nutrient cycles that sustain ocean ecosystems. Subpolar gyres influence the circulation of other ocean currents like the North Atlantic Current, the East Greenland Current, and the Labrador Current. -
Permafrost is the frozen mix of soil, ice, and rocks that occupies nearly a quarter of the land in the northern hemisphere. It contains vast amounts of animal and plant remains along with bacteria and other microorganisms. All it has been frozen – stuck in time – for millennia. -
At the end of September, the $7,500 federal tax credit for purchases of new electric cars and the $3,000 credit for used electric cars were discontinued, as a result of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that has undone multiple clean energy policies. Because of this, forecasts for EV sales over the next several years have been cut in half compared to what they were a year ago. -
Deep-sea mining is the extraction of minerals from the seabed in the deep ocean. Most of the interest is in what are known as polymetallic nodules, which are potato-sized mineral deposits that have built up in layers over thousands of years. Found miles below the ocean’s surface, these nodules contain valuable metals used in batteries and electronics, but mining them could harm fragile and largely unexplored deep-sea ecosystems.
