Grist List
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Use of wood for home heating explodes as oil prices climb
Good news for biomass-based energy enthusiasts: Heating with wood is making a comeback. If tree carcasses are good enough to power the trucks of energy-starved North Korea, they’re good enough for homesteaders in Maine! And more to the point, heating oil has gotten super expensive.
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Chinese firms selling solar panels for less than cost
Here comes that trade war over solar panels we’ve been hearing about — the one that will have unfortunate consequences for the domestic rollout of solar power. A forthcoming study by the federal government could finally set this snowball in motion. The study reveals that Chinese solar panel makers are selling their wares at a […]
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Giant companies get real about climate adaptation
Who’s got billions of dollars and isn't going to wait for the GOP to arrive in the 21st century before they drop a significant portion of it on preparing for our climate-changed future? These guys.
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McDonald’s discovers social media can backfire when people hate you
When McDonald's tried to launch the #McDStories Twitter campaign, they clearly envisioned a bunch of fond memories from Big Mac lovers. Unfortunately, they really, really misunderstood social media.
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Earth Liberation Front documentary gets Oscar nomination
The list of Oscar nominees was released this morning, and among the five films up for best documentary feature is If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front. The doc follows the story of so-called “eco-terrorists” who torched timber operations, meat packing plants, and other environmental horror shows in the 1990s. The […]
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Political leaders lowballed Gulf oil spill estimates
In the first weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico, government scientists were scrambling to figure out how much oil was leaking from the well. These estimates kept being revised upwards as the scientists got more information — and then revised downwards as politicians pressured them to make […]
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Stunning time-lapse video of Yosemite
Especially if you don’t have a window in your office — but honestly, even if you do — you want to watch this time-lapse video of sunsets, sunrises, and meteor showers in Yosemite National Park. [vimeo 35396305]
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Holy crap, solar storm!
YOU GUYS THAT’S WHAT THE SUN LOOKS LIKE RIGHT NOW. (Sort of. It’s a false-color composite of some UV photography of what the sun looks like right now. But it’s still pretty rad.) That up there in the upper right corner is the biggest solar storm in seven years, and a coronal mass ejection from […]
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Critical List: Sumatran elephants critically endangered; Al Gore goes on a cruise
Sumatran elephants are critically endangered. Watch out for the solar flare that’s supposed to hit Earth today! It’s the strongest since 2005. President Obama might pump increased domestic oil and gas production in his State of the Union.
