Grist List
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Dirty cities make us happy
It was very important to people’s happiness to see their city of residence as beautiful -- but not at all important to see their city as clean.
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Urban farmers vs. NIMBYist vegans, round one
Urban farmers are raising and slaughtering their own livestock, and a shadowy organization called Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter is up in arms about it.
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Wind turbine workers get their own reality show
“Turbine Cowboys,” tells the stories of a bunch of men and women "who are pushed to the limit both physically and emotionally as they brave extreme heights and every conceivable weather condition to work on wind turbines."
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Critical List: China’s emissions outstrip America’s; Bill Gates hearts geoengineering
By 2015, China will emit 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the United States does. The Texas drought has forced some towns to ship in their water by truck. Bill Gates is underwriting geoengineering lobbying efforts.
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This will be the greenest Super Bowl ever
I know football fans feel pretty strongly about doing things exactly the same way every time, lest their switch in underwear or beer brand or whatever be the butterfly’s wing that leads to their favorite team tanking. So I have some bad news for you guys: there will be some changes this year. But take […]
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Roseanne Barr wants to be the Green Party nominee for president
Roseanne Barr already told Jay Leno she planned to run for president, but back then she was going to start her own party. Now, though, she’s seriously seeking Green Party nomination for the 2012 presidential run. The (presumably recycled) paperwork is in, and given that I have zero idea who the heck else is running, […]
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Antarctica’s about to lose a New York City-sized chunk
Normally when icebergs split off from glaciers, it’s called “calving,” but I think it would be fair to say that Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier is about to have a cow. Pine Island Glacier, which is the continent’s fastest-melting glacier and unusually well-situated to contribute to sea level rise, is getting set to shed a chunk […]
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10-year-old discovers new energy-storing molecule by accident
Fifth-grader Clara Lazen was just messing around with a molecule modeling kit in class, trying to construct a stable molecule that followed basic chemistry rules. What she ended up with was a completely novel molecular structure, and a coauthor credit in the resulting journal article. Man, what were YOU discovering when you were 10? Masturbation […]
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‘Smart paint’ warns you when stuff’s about to break, so you can fix it
Someday we’ll fix infrastructure and the environment in the same way that Arizona suburbanites fix their lawns: By slapping on a coat of paint. Science has already made great strides on carbon-eating paint, and the kind of paint that can make windows into solar panels. And now researchers at at Glasgow’s University of Strathclyde have developed paint that […]
