Latest Articles
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Michele Bachmann seriously believes in a lightbulb conspiracy
So what is it with Michele Bachmann and hating on energy-efficient lightbulbs? She's like a lightbulb crusader. Mother Jones has done some digging, and it turns out this is because she basically believes that a science fiction parody of environmentalism is going to ruin America.
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New tool maps how badly climate change affects you
A new web tool from the Natural Resources Defense Council lets you map climate change threats — excessive heat, disease risk, pollution, drought, and flooding — anywhere in the United States. Above is the full U.S. map showing the average number of extreme heat days in 2000-2009, but you can also zoom in on your […]
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A pop-up urban experiment: The BMW Guggenheim Lab
On Houston Street in New York, the BMW Guggenheim Lab hopes to incubate ideas and solutions for the modern urban world. What will come of it?
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Solar-powered oil field runs on sunshine, irony
Put on your coal-fired vegan anti-irony helmets, because Oman is building a solar-powered oil field. Not because it will make them feel good or help them tamp down their emissions (I mean, this is oil they're digging up) but because it makes economic sense.
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Want to save energy? Stop wasting water
Turns out one of the single biggest sources of energy use in your home doesn't even show up in the electricity section of your utility bill.
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Western Pacific nations create the world's largest shark sanctuary
If you never quite believed your parents when they told you big, scary animals have more to fear from us than we do from them, consider this, via The New York Times' Joanna Foster: Sharks kill two or three people every year. People kill 73 million sharks in the same time period.
To protect these sharp-toothed scapegoats, Micronesian chief executives have decided to create a shark preserve of 2 million square miles in the western Pacific -- the largest shark sanctuary in the world.
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Fox News public enemy No. 1: Spongebob Squarepants
Is Fox News getting bored now that Obama's produced his birth certificate and the Casey Anthony trial is over? Apparently, since their new barely-tethered-to-reality flogging point is that SpongeBob SquarePants is indoctrinating kids with a sort of extremist environmental zealotry. The Department of Education hosted an event where kids got to pick out free SpongeBob books, and the Fox hosts' heads promptly exploded. Why? Because in one of the books on offer, SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs try to use car exhaust to cause global warming, in order to sell pool admission tickets.
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When collaborative consumption goes bad
Sharing networks are all the rage, but sometimes things go awry, as in the recent case of a woman who rented out her apartment via Airbnb and returned to find it trashed.
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Critical List: Canada’s pushing tar-sands oil; cutting methane also helps cut climate change
In 110 meetings over less than two years, the Canadian government tried to convince Europe to delay or derail legislative changes that could affect the imports of tar sands oil. Basically, Canada doesn’t want Europe to know how carbon-heavy the oil is, because that could affect U.S. and European imports. So they’re pushing it as environmentally friendly. Because hey, if you don’t know how dirty something is, maybe it’s clean!
We often talk about cutting carbon, but here's a reminder that cutting gases like methane and nitrous oxide can also slow climate change.
The EPA found that, left to their own devices, companies don't tell consumers that their processes release or their products contain chemicals harmful to children. -
Response to Wall Street Journal op-ed on clean fuels in the military
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an op-ed critical of the military's efforts on clean fuels. It was filled with factual errors and misunderstandings.
