PCBs are still tainting our fish, 45 years after we stopped making them
More than 40 years after the U.S. stopped making the chemicals known as PCBs, the human-made lubricants are still causing problems in New Hampshire including new restrictions on eating fish caught in Squam Lake. The state Department of Environmental Services has...Cars are disappearing from NH highways – trucks, not so much
The COVID-19 shutdown continues to be visible on New Hampshire highways – or, rather, invisible, since the big difference is the cars that aren’t there. That’s cars, not trucks: So far, the number of truck trips on the state’s turnpike system hasn’t declined very...We made the same mistakes with Spanish Flu that we made with COVID-19
Back in 1918, the excuse for downplaying a growing public-health crisis was World War I – didn’t want to hurt the war morale, and then we had to turn buildings in downtown Concord into emergency hospitals. I wrote about it for the Monitor. This year, the...
‘Flight-fear’ did what ‘flight-shaming’ couldn’t
Look at that chart from Flighttrader24.com showing global commercial airline flights this year! I don’t think there’s been a single event that has such a quick world-wide economic effect since the start of World War II – and even that was more...Carbon Cash-Back proposal was supported in towns, 2.3 to 1
It seems a million years ago but back when we were only worried about global climate catastrophe and not also imminent disease-caused societal collapse, there was a push for a non-binding warrant to support “fee to be paid by vendors of carbon-based fuels based on...
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Science Cafe NHAbout Granite Geek
Dave Brooks has written a science/tech column since 1991 – yes, that long – and has written this blog since 2006, keeping an eye on topics of geekish interest in and around New Hampshire, from software to sea level rise, population dynamics to printing (3-D, of course). He moderates monthly Science Cafe NH discussions, beer in hand, and discusses the geek world regularly on WKXL radio in Concord.
Brooks earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics but got lost on the way to the Ivory Tower and ended up in a newsroom. He has reported for newspapers from Tennessee to New England. Rummage through his bag of awards you’ll find oddities like three Best Blog prizes from the New Hampshire Press Association and a Writer of the Year award from the N.H. Farm and Forest Bureau, of all places. He joined the Concord Monitor in 2015.