carbon emissions
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Scientists build machine to suck carbon from the air
This machine sucks carbon out of the air like a Ghostbusters beam snarfing up ectoplasm. The idea is that if we can build millions of these babies, and find a good place to stick the carbon they capture, we can start to bring down Earth's already-dangerous levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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Revival of 117-year-old canal cuts cargo emissions 65 percent
Turns out shipping by barge is crazy efficient. It's also kind of picturesque! (According to this video from CNN there are no mules anymore, but we choose to imagine mules to up the picturesqueness factor.)
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A $50 million tipping point?
Michael Bloomberg's contribution to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign could have many ripple effects and force the U.S. to quit coal for good.
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Critical List: Shipping industry objects to E.U. emissions scheme; when horses act like squirrels
Like the airline industry, the shipping industry objects to the E.U.'s decisions to include it in a emissions trading system.
Will the federal government be spending less on disaster response in the future? Somehow “let ‘em drown” doesn’t seem like the best possible debt reduction plan.
Australia's carbon tax, which was so hotly disputed that people were sending climate scientists death threats, would apply to just 400 of the country's top polluters.
Hydro turbines are going into the Puget Sound by late summer 2013. -
Where do greenhouse gases come from?
This chart from the United Nations Environment Programme (click to embiggen) looks complicated, sort of like a traffic sign cross-bred with a banyan tree. But it basically just traces the path of greenhouse gases from polluting industries, through uses, out into the atmosphere. So you can tell at a glance, for instance, that energy industries […]
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Study: Earth losing its climate change defenses
Like your body, the planet can heal itself a little bit. Some places, like forests and oceans, are carbon sinks -- they absorb carbon from the atmosphere, slowing down the rate at which everything goes to hell. But climate change is no papercut, and as it gets worse, it’s actually breaking the planet’s immune system. Two new studies in Nature argue that two types of carbon sinks -- oceans and soil -- are becoming less effective as climate change advances.
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The good news about coal
Big Coal faces a powerful new enemy in its quest to build new plants: you.
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Houses made of bacteria could save 800 million tons of CO2
What would the world be like if we could build houses out of bacteria? For starters, the story of the Three Little Pigs might have ended very differently. But biomanufactured bricks, made of a mixture of sand and non-pathogenic bacteria, could also help house people in developing countries while saving almost 800 million tons of CO2 every year.
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Critical List: EPA delays rules on carbon emissions; Bachmann hates the EPA
The EPA is delaying until September rules that would regulate power plants' greenhouse gas emissions. Michele Bachmann has a great plan for the agency, should she become president: Rename it "the job-killing organization of America." That will solve everything! Fukushima clean-up has been a comedy of errors when it comes to safety protections. Many aren’t […]