Latest Articles

Huge strides in fuel efficiency innovation canceled out by bigger cars

If, and this is true, automakers have made huge strides in fuel efficiency over the past 30 years, why aren't we all driving the 100 MPG ubercars we were promised at Epcot Center when we were but wee lads and lasses?

The answer is that our cars, like our homes and just about everything else we consume, have been supersized, says MIT economist Christopher Knittel.

Photographer turns unrelenting boringness of suburbia into art

Jason Griffiths is an assistant professor of design at Arizona State, and apparently living in the middle of all that desert sprawl got to him after a while. In the early aughts he jumped into a car, drove all over the country, and made a discovery so banal it’s practically a tautology: Suburbia is the same everywhere.

Newt Gingrich, ‘amateur paleontologist,’ knows science better than you

Sure, there's overwhelming consensus among climate scientists (and scientists in a host of other fields) that climate change is for realsies. These are people with doctoral degrees, decades of experience, high-end instrumentation, and mountains of data -- but are any of them amateur paleontologists? Newt Gingrich is, and that means he knows they're wrong, and so there.

This guy owns only 15 things

Andrew Hyde owns only 15 things. And he knows what you're thinking right now:

The first question is always "Do you do laundry? How many pairs of underwear?" I'll never get a stranger’s obsession with my knickers, but that is *always* question #1. Question #2 is the "What do you own?" countdown, which is both fun and annoying to answer.

Screw China: American scientists are finding replacements for rare earth

Priuses, wind turbines, and other clean technologies require rare earth materials, which generally go into ultra-strong magnets that help power clean technology. But rare earth elements have a couple of problems: China controls most of the supply, they require less-than-environmentally-friendly mining to get at, and, uh, they’re rare. So there's a race on to create a replacement magnet component that doesn't require rare earth.

CleanTechnica reports that a team at Boston's Northeastern University has taken one step in the right direction -- developing a material with similar magnetic properties to rare earth.

Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse, says Pepsi

An Illinois man is suing Pepsi Co. because, he says, he found a mouse in his can of Mountain Dew. But Pepsi says the guy is pulling a Strange Brew, and here's how they know: If there really were a mouse in a Mountain Dew can, it would have dissolved into "a jelly-like substance" before the guy could find it. Seriously, this is their defense.

Critical List: Ghost octopi in the Antarctic; without ethanol subsidies, gas prices rise

The creatures discovered living in thermal vents near Antarctica -- ghost octopi, limpets, yeti crabs -- are le awesome.

Two major solar industry groups are merging in order to focus on state-level policies.

With ethanol subsidies gone, gas will cost more.

Greasy to gourmet: Seattle chefs help schools trade corn dogs for couscous

With the help of local chefs, the Seattle School District makes school lunches healthier by scaling up examples set in smaller towns like Berkeley.

Fixies to the people! Building a business on no-frills bikes

Here's the formula: Take a bike, boil it down to the basics -- frame, wheels, pedals, seat, handlebars. Offer it online, cheap. Then stand back and watch people snatch them up.

Santorum vs. Romney: The climate is screwed either way

Rick Santorum is less green than Mitt Romney, and nuttier on global warming. But both would promote dirty energy and neglect climate action.