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Conversations You WON'T Overhear

As summer gives grudging way to our back-to-work lives, busy execs will likely compare notes at Chamber of Commerce luncheons about the economy and job creation. We can all imagine those conversations, given recent market and political news, but here are a few you won’t be likely to overhear. Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon/Mobil: Hey […]

Shocker: BP oil spill was BP's fault

A federal report, based on an investigation by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, has officially placed the blame for the BP oil spill at the feet of -- who knew? -- BP.

Scientists are about to test a scheme to cool the Earth

If the world is getting hotter because it's absorbing too much sunlight, why not put up a sunshade? That's the question Montgomery Burns has often asked, and one that scientists in the UK will begin to answer this October when they will use a weather balloon to loft a hose a little more than half a mile into the sky. They'll then pump water up the hose into the atmosphere. If that sounds simplistic to you, maybe you just don’t understand science.

Mitt Romney's energy policy crafted by coal-funded shill

It should surprise no one that Mitt Romney's pro-coal, anti-carbon regulations energy plan was crafted by a coal zombie, but here are the deets anyway: Jim Talent, a key Romney advisor, leads a lobbying firm that took $125,000 from Peabody Energy to promote coal-related interests.

Fiddling while his state burns isn't just a metaphor for Perry, says Thomas Friedman

Oh look -- America's most-read liberal just devoted an entire column to climate change, or should we say climate weirding. It's nice to see the talking points we feed you, our climate hawk minions, repeated so succinctly in a national forum. There were even a few new ones we hadn't thought of yet:

NYC's bikeshare will have 10,000 bikes

New York is a big city, and most of its residents really hate driving (for good reason). So it seems appropriate that the city's planned bikeshare program, launching next summer, will be by far the largest in the U.S. Its 10,000 bikes will dwarf the 1,100 available from D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare, currently the country's largest. And the range will go from the Upper West Side all the way down into Brooklyn.

Indigenous Alaskans have no doubt the climate is changing

The U.S. Geological Survey had a novel idea about how to better understand climate change and its impacts: Ask the people most likely to be experiencing it. These researchers asked a group of people from Alaska's indigenous communities what their observations of climate change had been. Their basic response: Everything's all messed up.

Critical List: Congress holds Solyndra hearing; Bill Gates pushes for more clean energy funding

Lawmakers want to talk about Solyndra, its federal funding, and its bankruptcy. Solyndra execs realized that if they don't come to Washington, they don't have to talk about any of that. For good measure they may build a pillow fort to hide in.

Congress is still going to talk about it, of course. And probably use some strongly worded language.

A day before this hearing, Bill Gates and a bunch of other rich guys urged Congress to invest more in clean energy. #badtiming

Food Studies: the edible curriculum

Welcome to Food Studies, where you'll hear from the food makers, growers, thinkers, and advocates of tomorrow.

Tombstone, with sewage backups

New Mexico "ghost town" will give researchers room to play -- without flooding real people's basements.