Latest Articles
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Cutting international investments would endanger U.S. leadership
We need to step up, not cut, our funding for green energy in India.Photo: Amaresh S KThis post was coauthored by Rebecca Lefton. Lawmakers continue to debate the fiscal year 2011 budget. As we approach the next showdown this week over another temporary extension of the continuing resolution, a final resolution of the 2011 budget, […]
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Money is a miracle cure for ‘wind turbine syndrome’
There’s a down side to getting energy from wind: People who live near turbine farms report annoyance and even health effects from the noise. Amazingly, though, people with turbines on their land don’t have these symptoms, even though they live closer to the turbines than their suffering neighbors! What’s effecting this miraculous immunity? Turns out: […]
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GOP-led House rejects science, 240-184
Science is the foundation of progress. Rejecting science means in essence rejecting hope for Americans and indeed for all humankind: We live in complex times fraught with dangers, many of which are human-made and can be solved only by the application of science backed by resources that, sometimes, only government can mobilize. That is certainly […]
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Is global warming a black swan? Is the Japanese nuclear disaster?
Year after year the worriers and fretters would come to me with awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was only wrong twice. -Senior British intelligence official, retiring in 1950 after 47 years of service One of the defining characteristics of humans is our ability to ignore or downplay […]
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Stopping Congressional Attacks on the Clean Air Act
It’s a shame that so many in Congress are more concerned about Big Oil and King Coal than they are about public health and our children’s future – sadly, that’s what we’ve seen unfold over the past 24 hours, as the Senate voted on legislation attacking the Clean Air Act. The House is expected to […]
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How one nerd zeroed out his energy bill with solar panels [VIDEO]
George Musser, a physics editor at Scientific American, has dreamed of powering his home with solar panels ever since he was a little boy. And now he does! In New Jersey, no less. His story is a part of Beyond the Light Switch, a totally rad documentary filmed by Detroit Public Television that criss-crosses the […]
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London and Sydney have cute accents, great plans for biking
Both Sydney and London are making a push to become friendlier cities for biking. London’s instituted a big new bike-share program, and Sydney is building a giant network of bike lanes. Let’s check in on these two charming-accented metropolises and see what we can learn from them, shall we? London: London is going great guns […]
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Why Congress will destroy America sooner than touch oil subsidies
In a far-reaching, data-driven, and damning feature for the Huffington Post, lead Washington correspondent Dan Froomkin explains why Obama has found it completely impossible to eliminate subsidies to oil companies. These subsidies amount to up to $90 billion over the next 10 years — that's $90 billion that will be shouldered by every other taxpayer […]
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Too much is not enough for The Edge’s green mansion
U2’s The Edge is planning a mansion complex that’s a metonymy for post-Joshua Tree U2: It means well, really, but it’s just way, way over the top. The five homes (!) averaging 10,500 square feet (!!) are supposed to be built to LEED Gold standards, so bravo to The Edge for that. But if you […]
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Solar-powered wind turbines not just a joke
April fools led to a bunch of fake posts that made us die a little inside, and at least one that seemed like kind of a good idea: the solar-powered wind turbine. Turns out that the notion of harvesting the maximum amount of energy from the immediate environment is good enough that the combo of […]
