Latest Articles
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We’re fighting the wrong fights over energy subsidies
Clean energy subsidies are really very small in the grand scheme of things, says Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Consider that we're spending $83 billion a year just to patrol the Straits of Hormuz.
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Umbra’s second helpings: Making a stink about infrequent showering
A reader wonders if she should make her young sons bathe more frequently. Umbra comes clean.
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Scientists make depressing discovery about oceanic plastic pollution using depressing research technique
One of the best ways to gauge the extent of plastic pollution is by slicing up dead birds, some of whom were killed by the plastic.
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South Korea may start hunting whales again, for ‘science’
As part of the argument the nation makes for doing its scientific research: "whale meat is still part of a culinary tradition". Same reason we studied the Higgs boson.
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How environmentalists win
Bashing corporations isn't getting us anywhere. Major environmental reforms won't be achieved without corporate support.
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This image of the Colorado wildfire scar will blow your mind
This image from NASA (click to embiggen) shows the scar from the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado. It’s a false-color image — the fields aren’t actually running red with blood out there, yet — but the size of that burned patch is no illusion. Compare it to the city of Colorado Springs in the lower […]
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Making pollution costly: How China, British Columbia, and Australia are trying to get it done
China's environmental movement may be young, but it's starting to see real victories. So why are other countries having so much trouble enacting smart legal constraints?
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Stamp of disapproval: House farm bill to gut nutrition program
In its new draft of the farm bill, the House of Representatives is pushing for $16.5 billion in food stamp cuts.
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Cute bushy-tailed fossil suggests most dinosaurs had feathers
The dinosaur shown in this new fossil, which is so great it almost looks fake, is called Sciurumimus albersdoerferi — Sciurumimus means “squirrel mimic.” That’s undoubtedly because of its lush, bushy tail, perfectly preserved in fine-grained sediment. But that’s not a furry squirrel tail you’re looking at; it’s all feathers, and the discovery of S. albersdoerferi suggests […]
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Win-win: Ancient fungus that ended coal formation could boost biofuel production
Genomics researchers have stumbled upon an incredible discovery: The same ancestral fungus that ended coal formation millennia ago may now be able to boost bioenergy production.
