Articles by Christopher Mims
Christopher Mims's dystopian non-fiction is sought after by an ever-growing roster of publications.
All Articles
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Death of ‘lightbulb ban’ greatly exaggerated
Congresscritters who love inefficiency, waste, and air pollution — or at least the money that comes from industries that do — attached a rider to the spending bill yesterday evening that will reverse an earlier law to phase out crappy old-style lightbulbs. The crazy thing is that the ban is still in effect, and the […]
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Fundamental breakthrough could double electricity from solar panels
It is a truth often repeated that fundamental physical limits mean solar panels can never capture and transform more than about 31 percent of the sun's energy. But Xiaoyang Zhu at the University of Texas apparently just did the impossible, and in a most spectacular fashion: He found a way to increase the efficiency of […]
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Sucking carbon out of the air: Probably not an option
With all this talk of the impossibility of averting catastrophic levels of future climate change, it's tempting to daydream of using technology to clean up the bed we just shat. Economists, especially, love this kind of thinking — if we just hoard enough precious gold today, maybe we can transmute it into a livable planet […]
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Arctic methane turns out to be a huge problem after all
While the nerd herd was busy declaring the threat posed by gigantic new plumes of methane from the Arctic Ocean to be a non-starter, we all managed to miss the real methane menace, highlighted by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe: surprise. Surprise and fear. The two real methane menaces are fear and surprise. The bottom line: […]
