Latest Articles

Poison apples bad for consumers, Snow White

Environmental Working Group sifts through USDA data to figure out which Dirty Dozen fruits and veggies deliver the most pesticides. This year's winner: apples

A thrilling tale of bicycle revenge

K.C., who writes the blog A Girl and Her Bike, is a girl with a bike. She's also a District of Columbia police officer. But the second part's not so obvious when she's riding on a Capital Bikeshare bike, out of uniform and just trying to get home from work. Which is probably why some […]

NOAA: The new normal is hot

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center has just released an overview of its new “1981-2010 Climate Normals” [PDF]. Meteorologist Paul Douglas, founder and CEO of Broadcast Weather, explains what this means: NOAA just released the latest climate “normals” for the USA. When you hear the “average high” or “average low”, […]

The ‘Dirty Dozen’: Which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticides?

The Environmental Working Group has released an updated list of the Dirty Dozen, the fruits and vegetables with the worst pesticide levels. Drumroll please: Apples Celery Strawberries Peaches Spinach Nectarines (imported) Grapes (imported) Sweet bell peppers Potatoes Blueberries (domestic) Lettuce Kale/collard greens If you can, it's worth shelling out a little extra for the organic […]

This is what the history of climate change research looks like

Need at-a-glance visual evidence of that "scientific consensus on climate change" we keep talking about? Skeptical Science has put together an interactive visualization of 4,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers. You can drag the year slider around to see how research changes over time. And it gets even more interactive! The site also lets you see […]

A Powerful March on Blair Mountain

“There will come a time, I know, when people will take delight in one another, when each will be a star to the other, and when each will listen to his fellow as to music. The free people will walk upon the earth, people great in their freedom. They will walk with open hearts, and […]

As suburban office parks lose steam, Apple unveils the ultimate example

Back to the future in the Apple spaceship.Screenshot: Apple via YouTube The old-school suburban office park seems to be having a midlife crisis. A special report in Crain’s about Chicago-area businesses such as Sears, AT&T, and Sara Lee looking to relocate from the suburbs to the urban core — along with the news that Swiss […]

Buy a half-gallon of sugar water at KFC, give a dollar to diabetes research

I honestly didn't believe this one was for real at first. No way even KFC, purveyors of a sandwich that uses fried meat as a delivery mechanism for fried meat, would seriously market a soda size called the "mega jug." And even if they did, they'd never have the chutzpah to donate "mega jug" dollars […]

Bill Gates plans to get gas from your butt. (No, really.)

Bill Gates' latest clean energy investment gives a whole new meaning to the term "natural gas." The Gates Foundation is putting $1.5 million towards developing a "Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility" in Accra, Ghana. The facility takes human poop and turns it into biodiesel and methane, the same stuff natural gas companies are so eagerly pumping […]

How to fight obesity and climate change at the same time

In Louisville, Ky., projects that might normally pitched as good for the planet are being funded because they're good for people, too. Money from private and public investors is going towards building bike lanes, funding community gardens, and increasingly walkability in low income neighborhoods. The motivation behind the investments is not to reduce carbon emissions, […]