Peter Hanlon

Co-authored with Robin Madel.

Given the recent billion-dollar sale of Instagram, it's clear that the look of those faded, yellowed photos from the 1970s are all the rage. EPA, not usually known for having its finger on the pulse of pop culture, recently posted hundreds of its "

It looks like 2012 will be the year of two salmons: one a genetically altered "Frankenfish" currently under review by the Food and Drug Administration, and the other an inhabitant of one of the world's last great wild salmon runs, which is unfortunately situated atop a whole lot...

What could be more dependable than the tides? They sweep in and out once or twice a day, depending on the location, and you can find their precise timing and height in any newspaper in America. Or tide app, for the tech-savvy mariner.

For decades, cutting-edge renewable energy companies have...

This truly has been a summer of extremes. Texas had its hottest and driest summer ever recorded, while Northeastern states including New Jersey, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire had their wettest August ever.

Tropical Storm Lee kept the meteorological insults rolling in early September. While large swaths...

One of the advantages of living in New York City is that you can get nearly anything you need at almost any hour. Greasing the gears of that spur-of-the-moment consumption is the plastic bag. No need to think ahead about how to get groceries, the latest iPhone or a 22-ounce...

A lot of little fish just had a big week.

During the first week of August, fish that don't typically get the lavish attention enjoyed by more charismatic megafauna finally got some recognition that might keep them from disappearing.

The NRDC is spearheading an effort to get river...

They can ruin a perfectly nice beach day and are the very definition of spineless, and now jellyfish are drawing international attention with their power plant hijinks.

It's been a strange few weeks in which five power plants around the world have had to scale back or shut down due...

The power industry has a water addiction, and worse yet, it's in denial. The fact is that power plants are responsible for 49 percent of all water withdrawals in the United States, more than the combined amount withdrawn for drinking water and agriculture.

Why so thirsty?...

As a New York transplant, I have to admit that I don't totally understand the New York-New Jersey rivalry. It seems the animosity is focused more on cutthroat tax rate competition and a couple of hockey teams than anything truly juicy.

But a national ranking of state solar...

I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of eating and breathing and of wildlife with fully-functioning reproductive organs. So last month, when the EPA ignored questionable doomsday energy predictions from the power industry and its allies and instead told the industry...

I've been surfing for about twenty years now, but it would be a big mistake to confuse longevity with ability. No, instead of developing the skills to cross-step stylishly or even execute a proper cutback, what I've gained most while surfing has been an awareness of change in the ocean....

Last July NASA released a world map that identifies hundreds of areas in the world's oceans with dangerously low oxygen levels. These hypoxic areas - virtually uninhabitable for most marine life - are a result of eutrophication, or too many nutrients from fertilizer runoff and sewage discharges finding...

Oysters are disappearing!

Wait, no. Make that wild oysters are disappearing!

A recent technical paper produced a mouthful of a talking point: 85 percent of oyster reefs have been lost globally, and in many bays once-plentiful oyster reefs are now functionally extinct.

Functionally extinct.

As you might expect,...

There's a lot of talk about getting those darn EPA regulators off of the power industry's back, but what about the tangled mess of red tape facing the renewable energy industry? Customers who want to install small-scale, distributed generation like solar panels and wind turbines are confronted with...

Originally published at Ecocentric.

When it comes to ocean power, wind turbines get all of the attention. But below the surface of the infamous East River, tidal turbines are getting ready to make a big statement in the Big Apple.

Back in 2006, Verdant Power started...

If there is such thing as the Fish Book A-Team, then I've seen it in action; that is to say, action that's light on explosions but heavy on fish jokes. A number of seafood-centric writers and scientists including Paul Greenberg, Mark Kurlansky,

Co-authored with Rosalind Jackson (Vote Solar) and James Rose (Network for New Energy Choices).

Ever since we hinted at it back in September, we imagine that you, dear reader, have been anxiously awaiting our latest update to the Freeing the Grid report. Well, wait...

Originally published at Ecocentric.

So here's a mystery to consider: Why didn't National Vampire Awareness Day catch on? Much of the world is still in the throws of a several-years-long vampire fixation - the sheer volume of novels, television series, movies and advertisements is enough for...

You've seen them everywhere: little accordion-folded wallet cards designed to help seafood lovers select the most sustainable fish when at the market or out at a restaurant. The simple three-color schemes -- green (good!), yellow (okay...maybe!) and red (really bad!) -- used by several different seafood consumer guides have certainly...

NASA's Earth Observatory's "Image of the Day" blog is like a high-grade morning fix for nerdy armchair geographers (ahem). It takes a certain mindset to get excited each morning by an Uruguayan rainfall anomaly map or a satellite image of the Indus River. Take a step back, however,...