The Tesla Model S seats seven, you say, Tesla Motors? LIES. More liberal lies about electric vehicles! As this video will definitively prove, as long as you don't mind carting a trunk full of kindergarteners, a back seat full of kindergarteners, with kindergarteners driving and kindergarteners in the engine, the Model S can seat 16. Probably 18 if you add the kindergarteners necessary to work the brake and accelerator.

You might think fracking is a highly divisive, heatedly contested issue, but most Americans don't give a damn about it either way.

The latest Climate Change in the American Mind survey found that 39 percent of respondents had never heard of fracking, while another 13 percent didn't know whether they had heard of it.

So it's not too much of a surprise, then, to learn that 58 percent of survey respondents held no opinion on whether fracking is a good thing or a bad thing.

Those who did have an opinion were roughly split between supporters and opponents, the survey found. Older conservative men tended to think it's ace. Younger liberal women did not.

The adage "think global, act local" rings remarkably true in Whatcom County, Wash., a rural area in the northwestern corner of the country.

The seven county council members there will play a big role in deciding how much coal gets dug up in Great Plains states, shipped out of America, and burned by developing countries.

Over the next two years, the council will decide whether to issue two permits needed for the planned $600 million Gateway Pacific Terminal, which would export massive amounts of coal from Wyoming and Montana to Asia. In doing so, these council members will help determine the very future of the world's climate.

So it's a big deal that Whatcom County voters will be electing four council members this November.

A farmer in Oregon found a patch of wheat growing like a weed where it wasn't expected, so the farmer sprayed it with the herbicide Roundup. Surprisingly, some of the wheat survived.

The startled farmer sent samples of the renegade wheat to a laboratory, which confirmed something that should have been impossible: The wheat was a genetically engineered variety that had never been approved to be grown in the U.S., nor anywhere else in the world.

All across the country, infrastructure is falling apart. Roads are cracking, bridges are collapsing, and no one really has the money to fix it. But New York City has an idea! Latch onto the 3D printing craze, and print out concentrate columns to keep piers up, instead of using wood that will just rot out again. It will only save, oh, about $3 billion.

Gizmodo reports:

Here’s how their scheme would work. A team of workers would use a 3D scanner to take accurate reading of each piling. Then, based on the scans, they’d use a generative algorithm to create the ideal structural reinforcements for each piling. The team at D-Shape would print each column and pack it in an inflatable raft, which would be towed into the harbor and slowly deflated.

Astrid Schanz-Garbassi. Picture 10 spry undergraduates pedaling their quads into a burn on a set of stationary bikes. An 11th student leads the spin class from a bike in front, yelling that none of them need their glutes, anyway, while Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” thumps through their eardrums. Now imagine we could actually do something with all that energy they’re using to go nowhere. Like keep the lights on, for example. That’s the idea behind YouPower, a bike room that opened last April on the Vermont campus of Middlebury College. It’s the brainchild of Astrid Schanz-Garbassi, who graduated in …

Times are good for the merchants of fossil fuels.

Coal is making a comeback in the U.S., natural gas prices are rising, and Saudis are living like kings off an oil market that is simply heavenly.

Just last year, demand for coal had dropped deeper than a canary lowered down a mine shaft. Prices had been pushed down by the natural gas fracking boom. But The Washington Post reports that demand and prices for coal have rebounded:

According to the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, coal has been reclaiming some — though not all — of its market share in 2013. ...

As the solar sector explodes, some of the solar panels it produces are fizzling out.

The New York Times reports on the problem of faulty panels and says nobody knows how pervasive it is because nobody keeps track. Fingers are being pointed at corner cutting by manufacturing firms in China. From the Times article:

Worldwide, testing labs, developers, financiers and insurers are reporting [quality] problems and say the $77 billion solar industry is facing a quality crisis just as solar panels are on the verge of widespread adoption. ...

The quality concerns have emerged just after a surge in solar construction. In the United States, the Solar Energy Industries Association said that solar panel generating capacity exploded from 83 megawatts in 2003 to 7,266 megawatts in 2012, enough to power more than 1.2 million homes. Nearly half that capacity was installed in 2012 alone, meaning any significant problems may not become apparent for years.

Walmart doesn't just scrimp on employee wages. It also scrimps on employee training, and that led to its workers dumping returned pesticides, bleach, and other hazardous products into the trash or sewer systems.

On Tuesday, Walmart pled guilty to violations of federal environmental laws and agreed to pay $81.6 million in fines and penalties for improper hazardous waste disposal.

From an EPA press release:

[U]ntil January 2006, Wal-Mart did not have a program in place and failed to train its employees on proper hazardous waste management and disposal practices at the store level. As a result, hazardous wastes were either discarded improperly at the store level -- including being put into municipal trash bins or, if a liquid, poured into the local sewer system -- or they were improperly transported without proper safety documentation to one of six product return centers located throughout the United States.

Apple, after getting hit with criticism for using dirty energy at its data centers, has been increasingly drawing on green power -- wind, solar, geothermal, and, now, former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Tuesday that Jackson, who served as Barack Obama's top environmental official during his first term, will join the company as vice president for environmental initiatives.

From The Washington Post:

Cook, who made the announcement at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital D11 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., said Jackson will be reporting directly to him and is “going to be coordinating a lot of this activity across the company.”