Grist List
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Ithaca mayor turns his personal parking space into a mini-park
The 25-year-old mayor gave up his car to join the 15 percent of his city's residents who walk to work.
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Critical List: Spain’s done with clean energy; coal country locals defend Big Coal
European Union greenhouse gas emissions rose 2.4 percent in 2010. Spain’s done with clean energy — the government is shutting off aid to renewable energy companies. People living in coal country are still willing to defend Big Coal against natural gas. Stockholm syndrome? (Or maybe they just got $50 and a T-shirt.)
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Weird astronomical event in New York City tonight
If you’re in New York City at 8:19 p.m. today, get your ass to a major cross street (the best ones are 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, and 57th) and you can see the street grid take on astronomical significance. Tonight is Manhattanhenge, where the setting sun lines up exactly with Manhattan’s east-west streets. It’ll be an […]
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Russian rivers are clogged with frozen oil
Whatever terrors the U.S. oil industry might come up with, the Russian oil industry is worse. Greenpeace’s Jon Burgwald recently visited Usinsk, a frigid city that’s a major Russian oil outpost. The oil pollution is so bad in this area that thawing rivers run black with oil. There’s even oil ice, which you can see […]
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World’s oldest trees face country’s worst smog
Sequoia National Park can lay claim to two superlatives — its redwoods are the oldest single organisms on the planet and its air quality is the worst of any national park in the country. The smog pollution in the park is so bad that levels reach L.A.-worthy heights. The park might seem like it’s in […]
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Giant road lobsters attacking cyclists
We’re gonna need a bigger bike.
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Critical List: Prius is world’s third most popular car; irradiated tuna hit the U.S.
Gas should only get cheaper as the summer begins. The Toyota Prius is now the world’s third best-selling car. Bluefin tuna caught off the coast of California have Fukushima radiation in them. (Not much though.) One expert says that those massive dolphin die-offs in Peru were caused by sonar from oil exploration. Where there’s fracking, […]
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You can identify poor neighborhoods from space
Tim De Chant at Per Square Mile has noted that rich urban areas have way, way more trees than poor areas in the same city. In fact, the difference is so stark that income inequality can be seen from space. The satellite images above are low-income West Oakland and high-income Piedmont, and I probably don’t […]
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Fast-food burgers have tripled in size since the 1950s
According to this chart from the CDC, fast-food burgers have more than tripled in size since the 1950s, going from four ounces (i.e. a quarter pound) to a whopping 12. And if you think that’s bad, the average soda is six times as big as it used to be.
