Articles by Grist staff

Dude, the Powder Is Nuclear Today!

Extreme microbes may aid nuclear waste disposal Researchers with the Department of Energy, hip to the latest trends, have developed genetically manipulated “extreme microbes” that reportedly survive entirely on Red Bull and communicate via appropriated skater slang. Ah, we kid. But there are some pretty bitchin’ microbes out there. Able to survive in earth’s most […]

Better Red Than Dead

Annual “Red List” of threatened species says lots of species are threatened The World Conservation Union released its annual Red List of threatened species today, and it ain’t pretty. Some 15,589 species — 7,266 animals and 8,323 plants and lichens — are in danger, up more than 3,000 from just last year. Nearly an eighth […]

I’ll Have a Side of Hash Browns

U.S. joins 13 other nations in plan to reduce methane emissions Fourteen nations agreed yesterday to a non-binding agreement to curtail methane emissions by trapping the gas and using it as a relatively clean-burning fuel before it’s released into the atmosphere. Methane is the second most common heat-trapping greenhouse gas — albeit a distant second […]

Givin’ the Smog a Bone

Huge new study shows that smog does, in fact, kill The largest study ever conducted on the health effects of smog, or more particularly, ground-level ozone, concludes that, well, smog kills people. Published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study found that a ground-level ozone rise over a […]