Latest Articles
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Rick Perry: The EPA 'won't know what hit 'em'
Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry announced his intentions to make the EPA unapologetically pro-pollution.
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Light pollution is stealing our night sky — here's how to get it back
This (left) is your sky. And this (right) is your sky on ONE MAJOR LIGHT SOURCE. So it's no surprise that suburban starscapes have been totally desaturated by the lights on buildings, roads, and parking lots. Less than half the U.S. -- and almost none of Europe -- has dark enough night skies to see the Milky Way.
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Mom could be arrested for letting her kid bike to school
There are a few factors that make it tricky for kids to bike or walk alone: Bad drivers who face insufficient consequences, lack of sidewalks and protected bike lanes, too few crosswalks. We COULD improve biking and walking infrastructure, and have cops actually crack down on illegal driving maneuvers. But that's hard! Instead, let's just arrest everybody who doesn't drive their kids to school. That appears to be the approach in Elizabethton, Tenn., where Teresa Tryon has been threatened with arrest if she keeps letting her daughter bike to school on her own.
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Don’t tell Bachmann, but lightbulb standards were a Republican idea
Republicans have been whining about the Obama administration’s liberty-squashing decision to phase out inefficient incandescent bulbs in favor of CFLs, LEDs, and (surprise!) more efficient incandescent bulbs. But (double surprise!) the idea of requiring efficient lightbulbs sprang fully-formed from the head of a Republican, Michigan Rep. Fred Upton.
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Las Vegas actually pretty good at conserving water
The Las Vegas strip likes to pretend it’s flush in all manner of luxuries, including water -- even though Lake Mead, which provides the city with water, could disappear within the next decade. Running a giant fountain or indoor canal in the middle of the desert is the hydrological equivalent of flashing fat stacks of cash. But while casinos aren't exactly down with water conservation (that’s for poor people!), the Las Vegas government is.
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Nothing says eco-tourism like a 21-foot crocodile
What do you do with a suspected man-eating crocodile the size of a small aircraft? Make it the highlight of an eco-tourism park. At least, that's what wildlife authorities in the Philippines are doing with a 21-foot crocodile they caught this weekend. Lord, if only Steve Irwin were here to see this.
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Farmers who don't believe in climate change adapting to it anyway
In our nation's breadbasket, adaptation to climate change is very much already in progress -- the attitudes of those who represent farmers in our nation's capital notwithstanding. Higher minimum temperatures are reducing yields for corn, which likes hot days but cool nights. So whatever their political leanings, farmers have to adapt or face disaster.
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Koch brothers compare Obama to Saddam Hussein, declare 2012 will be ‘war’
A complete audio transcript of the Koch brothers' annual super-secret gathering of hard-right bazillionaires just leaked, and it's full of all the usual invective you'd expect to hear out of America's favorite pro-business libertarian climate change deniers.
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Introducing the self-inflating bicycle tire
PumpTire has developed the world's first self-inflating bike tire, which actually takes in air and inflates to ideal pressure as you ride. This won't keep you from ever getting a flat or anything, but it could spare you a lot of tedious adjusting and checking of tire pressure.
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Bangkok could be underwater by 2030
Ten million people live in Bangkok -- a metropolis more populous even than New York City -- and the ground beneath their feet is literally sinking into the ocean.
