Articles by Grist staff

We Can’t Handle the Truth

Court rules that Cheney may keep task-force deliberations secret In a major political and legal victory for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court has ruled that Vice President Dick Cheney is not obliged to release records on his secretive 2001 energy task-force meetings, effectively ending the long-running legal challenge brought by the Sierra Club […]

Private Eyes Are Watching Ewe

Remote sensors, cameras able to monitor earth’s health Technological advances in the burgeoning field of environmental monitoring are allowing scientists to take frequent and accurate measurements of weather conditions, animal behavior, and even contaminant levels without leaving their workstations. By placing tiny wireless instruments — no larger than a cell phone or a deck of […]

Fiddler on the Hot Tin Roof

Climate scientists grow more concerned as Rome burns, Nero fiddles In most fields of science, lay opinion tends to be more alarmist than scientific opinion, says Carbon Mitigation Initiative codirector Robert Socolow. “But, in the climate case, the experts — the people who work with the climate models every day, the people who do ice […]

Lead and Circus

EPA lead regs quietly morph from mandatory rules to voluntary standards The U.S. EPA has fallen a bit — and by “a bit” we mean nine years — behind schedule on issuing lead regulations pertaining to building renovation. But better late than never, right? Maybe not. Turns out the EPA has quietly shifted its regulatory […]