Grist List
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Organic food is not always sustainable food
Good food, as we've come to know it in that last few years, has a few characteristics: It's local. It's grown using responsible, land-loving techniques, like crop rotations and polycultures. And it's organic, raised without chemical fertilizers and poison pesticides. At one point, “organic” was shorthand for all of that, because the same people who cared enough to grow their vegetables with manure cared about environmental sustainability and tended to be local.
But now “organic” can be shorthand only for adherence to a certain set of rules that outlaw certain concentrations of certain types of fertilizers and pesticides, and as the New York Times points out, it sometimes doesn't mean much else. -
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Your car commute helps cause tornadoes
Just like humans, East Coast tornadoes work extra hours during the week and take it easier on the weekends. According to a new study, tornadoes and hailstorms are less likely to occur on a Saturday or Sunday. That’s because hail and tornadoes thrive on pollution, which is higher towards the middle of the week.
The study looked at summertime storm activity and found above-average rates of storms mid-week and below-average rates on weekends. It turns out that this is because moisture likes pollutants. -
Critical List: Fracking ‘almost certainly’ caused earthquakes; wolves save trees
The disposal of fracking wastewater "almost certainly" was the cause of all those earthquakes near Youngstown, Ohio.
Oil is washing up on the shores of Nigeria; Shell denies it's from the massive oil spill that occurred last month.
BP wants Halliburton to cover the $20 billion it paid to clean up and otherwise deal with the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Wolves save trees. (Related: Deer are sort of like giant squirrels.) -
Gingrich scraps planned book chapter on climate change
If Newt Gingrich were backpedaling any faster on climate change, he might actually come full circle and turn into Al Gore. But what can the man do? He’s totally damaged his right-wing reputation by believing in science and giving a crap about the future survival of anything. What Republican can run with the hideous heart […]
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Times Square ball-drop switches to LEDs
Despite Republicans' efforts to equate efficient lighting with tyranny, the age of incandescent bulbs will be officially over as of Jan. 1. The best indication of this switch-over is not any one piece of legislation coming out of Washington, but a totally symbolic move: When the Times Square balls drops at midnight on New Year's […]
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Critical List: Judge nixes California’s low-carbon fuel standard; mystery foam attacks England
A federal judge put the kibosh on California's low-carbon fuel standard, which favors fuels that create fewer emissions to make and which, according to the judge, discriminates against out-of-state fuel producers. On carbon credit markets, credits cost way less than they should. China is moving forward on a plan to build a gigantic dam on […]
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‘Micro-lofts’ are luxury shantytowns for hipsters
Vancouver has come up with a unique solution to the outrageous cost of housing in the city: Murphy everything. A local construction company is building a block of tiny apartments, each the size of a one-car garage, and making them livable by turning their walls into the domestic equivalents of pop-up books. The “micro-lofts” are […]
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Slum residents get a giant escalator for Christmas
If you had $7 million to use on behalf of the residents of your poorest slums, how would you distribute it? For Medellin, Colombia, that’s a no-brainer: Blow the whole wad on a MONSTER ESCALATOR. Wait, wait! It’s actually a good idea. The giant escalator helps slum residents get to their hillside homes from the […]
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Panda caught eating meat on camera for first time ever
Pandas: Not vegetarians after all. Sure, they subsist mostly on bamboo, but these are BEARS, people. They may seem cuddly in the zoo, but in the wild, when they don’t think anyone is looking, super-secret cameras caught one feasting on the dead carcass of a gnu. Watch this video for the grisly evidence. Next time […]
