Latest Articles

Pepper spray is not messing around

If this weekend's attack on students had you wondering how bad pepper spray really is, science writer Deborah Blum has you covered. Answer: It's five times more intense than the hottest natural pepper in the world. (Commercial pepper spray is twice as intense, but the police-grade stuff is supercharged.) That's because it's made of capsaicin, […]

How extreme weather almost aborted this year’s Thanksgiving meal

It’s a miracle Thanksgiving is happening this year at all, given all the extreme weather we’ve had. If you’re wondering when climate change will start affecting us in ways that are heartbreaking as well as economically painful, here’s how this year’s feast almost didn’t happen.

Report: Homeownership is keeping unemployment high

The U.S. is suffering crushing unemployment, yet workers can't move to where the jobs are because they are trapped in underwater mortgages, explains a new report from Brookings. This, it turns out, is the ultimate fate of the "ownership society" that our government has been pushing for so long through Fannie, Freddy, and tax policy: […]

Walmart’s promised green product rankings fall off the radar

In 2009, Walmart created a stir when it announced that it would develop a Sustainability Index to assess the environmental impacts of every item on its shelves and provide an easy rating system to help shoppers make greener choices. CEO Mike Duke described [PDF] the index as “a simple tool that informs consumers about the […]

Water. Coal. Texas. Sanity. One of these words does not belong.

Texas’ water problems won’t be over anytime soon.Photo: SeanIn case anyone missed it, Texas had a big drought last summer — the worst one-year drought in the state’s history. Lakes dried, animals were slaughtered, cities imposed lawn-watering restrictions, the governor prayed for rain. Among the doom-and-gloom sector of the left, talk has been circulating of […]

Here’s a house made of newspaper and lottery tickets

Texas Tech engineering students are testing out Building Blox, cinderblock-style construction materials that are basically bulletproof papier mache. The blocks are made from a slurry of recycled newspapers, phone books, and lottery tickets, but they're twice as strong as cinderblocks despite weighing a third as much. They also improve a home's energy efficiency by insulating […]

No National Climate Service for you, says Congress

Can Congress say no to an innocuous, zero-cost request for a government agency to reorganize itself so that it contains a National Climate Service? The answer — in our anti-science, post-truth, batshit crazy America — is yes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wanted to create what it calls a "one stop shop" for climate […]

Chevron on Brazil spill: ‘Oh whoops, our bad’

Earlier this month, an oil well that Chevron was drilling off the coast of Brazil sprung a leak, and as many as 110,000 gallons of oil have spread over the sea bed and into the ocean. Chevron didn’t even notice at first — Brazil's state oil company had to sound the alarm about the spill, […]

Watch Jamie Oliver say something unprintable to McDonald’s on TV

One of the greatest things among the many great things about British accents is how classy they generally make swearing sound. This works best if you're, say, Stephen Fry; it's a little less effective for Jamie Oliver and his mockney pronunciation, but it's still pretty funny to watch him cuss at McDonald's on Jimmy Kimmel […]

Climate change pantry raid: Oysters

Here's the current list of delicious foods that climate change is going to take away: pecan pie, chocolate, coffee, wine, bacon, peanut butter. Now, a new addition: oysters. This list does sound like the grocery list of a 1 percenter who shops only at a Dean & Deluca in Park Slope. (Wine-filled, coffee-flavored, bacon-flecked chocolate […]