Getting into space via shuttle is difficult and expensive. So why not take a train? Startram is a magnetic levitation train that could -- theoretically -- launch people into orbit for a fraction of the cost.

S. Matthew Liao, a philosopher and bioethicist, has some incredible ideas about how to deal with climate change. Instead of resorting to geoengineering, he suggests, why not consider engineering humans to cause less damage to the planet? Ross Andersen interviewed Liao, and one of the most fascinating ideas that they discussed is the possibility of selecting embryos that will grow into "smaller, less resource-intensive children." Here's Liao's argument:

It's been suggested that, given the seriousness of climate change, we ought to adopt something like China's one child policy. There was a group of doctors in Britain who recently advocated a two-child maximum. But at the end of the day those are crude prescriptions---what we really care about is some kind of fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family. If that's the case, given certain fixed allocations of greenhouse gas emissions, human engineering could give families the choice between two medium sized children, or three small sized children. From our perspective that would be more liberty enhancing than a policy that says "you can only have one or two children." A family might want a really good basketball player, and so they could use human engineering to have one really large child.

That starts sounding a little too dystopian a little too fast for my taste. But geoengineering ideas -- spraying the sky with chemicals that turn it white and reflect more heat back into space, for instance -- can fit just as easily into the creepy sci-fi "the robots are taking over" genre. Here are some of Liao's other ideas:

Photo by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

If you’ve been enjoying the recent unseasonably warm weather, prepare for a buzzkill: A study published on Sunday by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found that even a teensy global temperature increase could turn the Greenland ice sheet into the world’s largest puddle.

Previous research has suggested it would need warming of at least 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, in a range of 1.9-5.1 C (3.4-9.1 F), to totally melt the icesheet.

But new estimates, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, put the threshold at 1.6 C (2.9 F), in a range of 0.8-3.2 C (1.4-5.8 F), although this would have to be sustained for tens of thousands of years.

Just to put things into perspective, obliterating the Greenland ice cap would create about 23.6 feet of sea level rise, flooding areas like Western Europe, New Orleans, and Manhattan.

The next installment in your continuing Grist List coverage of baby sloths being incomprehensibly adorable:

In Nicaragua, the military has a new mission -- fighting climate change and, specifically, the illegal loggers that are exacerbating deforestation in the country.

The Ecological Battalion’s 580 soldiers are currently engaging in Operation Green Gold, finding and intercepting loads of illegally logged timber.

Japan marked the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster this weekend.

The Americans who are paying the highest gas prices live in blue states, so everyone else quit yer bitchin’.

Meet ten families who live right next a nuclear plant -- and love it.

Photo by California Academy of Sciences.

Researchers recently announced a new species of shark, the Galapagos Catshark, or Bythaelurus giddingsi. Catsharks are one of the largest families of sharks, and are also known as dogfish, a synonym scenario that is not at all ass-backwards. And to make classification even more complex, the newly discovered species of catshark/dogfish has a lot in common with the snowflake: The arrangement of leopard-like spots on Galapagos Catshark is unique to each fish. So it’s a catshark or dogfish with spots like a leopard and the characteristics of a snowflake -- got it?

SimCity is back (or will be in 2013), and looking pretty damn awesome. And now, along with public approval and municipal funds and Godzilla attacks, there's a new factor to juggle: Making lousy energy choices can force your city to contend with climate change.

Photo by Todd Shaffer.

Police officers in the Philippines are trading their guns and billy clubs for weapons of mass construction: shovels, watering cans, and gardening gloves. That’s because they’re partnering with the country’s Department of Environmental and Natural Resources to combat climate change and deforestation. Their Green Ops mission? Plant 10 million treesin one year.

The push to reforest the Philippines comes on the heels of a recent executive order by President Benigno Aquino, known as the National Greening Program, which aims to rehabilitate nearly 500 thousand acres of previously cleared forest cover by February 2013.

Photo by Jake Metcalf.

San Francisco’s hipsters are about to get motorized. Scoot Networks, an electric scooter rental system similar to Zipcar, recently launched in the Bay Area.

The system, which is being rolled out to San Francisco-based companies for private fleets, lets users locate nearby scooters with their smartphone and claim the one they want (as with Zipcar, each scooter lives at a certain location). After it’s docked into the scooter, the phone unlocks the vehicle and acts like a virtual dashboard, providing a map as well as information on speed and range.