Archive: Mar 2012
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Zombie pipeline! Senate narrowly kills Keystone XL — for now
The Senate on Thursday voted down a provision that would have rubber-stamped the Keystone oil pipeline. But this undead monster refuses to stay down.
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Rancher sticks up for animals in factory farm country
Farmer and strongman Kevin Fulton has taken on the admirable if unenviable task of bridging conventional agriculture and animal rights.
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Iceland plans to turn excess carbon into stone
Instead of smokestacks belching carbon into the air, plants and factories in Iceland may soon have well injectors to push the greenhouse gases underground. You might think this would inflate the Earth like a balloon and lift it out of orbit (okay, you probably don’t think that, but it’s a good image). But in fact, […]
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Engine failure: GOP’s signature highway bill sputters, dies
With his $260 billion highway-building proposal sputtering, House Speaker John Boehner resorted to pleading and threats. In the end, the bill is headed for the junk heap.
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Mercury-loaded cosmetics target minority communities
Beauty may only be skin deep, but the damage from cosmetics reaches way down into the kidneys, brains, and other organs — at least, it does if those cosmetics contain mercury, as several brands do, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). What’s even worse is that these mercury-loaded cosmetics are targeted specifically towards […]
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Delicious, edible food packaging could curb plastic waste
If you want to know why the earth and waterways are quickly morphing into giant garbage heaps, look no further than your pudding cup. Desserts, sodas, yogurts, and every other processed treat that comes tucked inside a plastic container are creating a slew of plastic pollution. But Harvard scientist David Edwards has an innovative — and […]
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Watch today’s solar flare erupt from the sun
Two solar flares burst out of the sun on March 6. NASA notes: “One of the most dramatic features is the way the entire surface of the sun seems to ripple with the force of the eruption.” Badass! The first flare was the second largest of this solar cycle (which started in 2009), and it’s […]
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Oh my god, now there’s a live polar bear cam??
Apologies to anyone who thought they were ever going to get anything accomplished ever again.
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In 2014, corn biofuel is out, wood biofuel is in
Biofuel sounds like a pretty good idea — down with power plants, up with regular plants! — but if the country switches over to corn ethanol we will basically be unable to grow any other crops. A new study has calculated that corn destined for ethanol production would have to take over 80 percent of […]