Articles by Grist staff

Arctic You Glad We Didn’t Say Banana

Arctic ice cap is melting fast, say scientists The Arctic ice cap has shriveled to its smallest size in a century; at this rate of shrinkage, the summer cap may vanish by 2060. Researchers who compiled the data say the process appears to have become self-sustaining: As ice melts, there’s more water, which absorbs more […]

Strife After Death

“Death of Environmentalism” authors offer follow-up Among a series of stories on environmentalism’s fortunes in the latest issue of The American Prospect is “Death Warmed Over” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, a follow-up to their notorious “Death of Environmentalism” essay of last year. In their latest treatise, argues Grist‘s David Roberts, they condescend to […]

Next Up: Jerry Bruckheimer on Defense Policy

Novelist Michael Crichton testifies before Senate on climate change As part of his ongoing attempts to defy parody, Senate Environment Committee chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.) convened a hearing yesterday on climate science, featuring as an “expert” witness … a novelist. Yup, it was Michael Crichton, whose latest thriller State of Fear casts global warming as […]

Let No Good Seed Go Unpunished

Exposure to heavily polluted air can damage sperm DNA Turns out air pollution can make a man into a eunuch. Research published this month in the journal Human Reproduction found that the sperm quality of 35 men in Teplice, Czech Republic, diminished significantly in the winter when more fossil fuels were burned and the area’s […]