Grist List
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Finally, celebrities come up with some real global warming solutions
We need fresh, innovative, attention-grabbing new ideas for combating global warming, and the Clinton Foundation Celebrity Division is on the case. That Kristen Wiig is really on to something — I'm gonna go hold my breath right now.
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Secret Antarctic mountains will help us understand Earth’s climate history
Deep underneath the Antarctic ice sheet are the Gamburtsev mountains, a mountain range the size of the Alps. Scientists are finally piecing together the story of their creation, destruction, and re-creation, and it could help with modeling future climate conditions. The original Gamburtsev mountains, kicked up by continental drift, were eroded down to the root […]
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Lobbyists scoff at the idea of children’s health
The New York Times has a big article about the fight for ozone regulation, which apparently was pretty much EPA chief Lisa P. Jackson versus the world. It's an interesting meditation on the power of buzzwords — namedropping "the economy" and "jobs" helped neutralize support for the regulations, even though analyses showed that they wouldn't […]
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Surprise! Koch-funded anti-Solyndra ad is ‘mostly false’
Here's an anti-Solyndra ad put out by Americans For Prosperity. It is wrong. And it's been viewed 1 million times on YouTube alone, not to mention millions more on television. Which just goes to show you that if you give the people what they want, they will eat it up like delicious candied bacon, because […]
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Thanksgiving turkeys can’t have sex because their breasts are too big
Steven Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, recently told Marketplace that almost 100 percent of Thanksgiving turkeys are the product of artificial insemination. The problem, apparently, is Americans' appetite for gigantic breasts. "The modern turkey has quite large turkey breasts, and it actually physically gets in the way when the male and the female try to create […]
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Giant robot snake fights spider, provokes climate change conversation
"Primordial spirits have been stirring … " "A provocative omen on the eve of catastrophe … " It will "roam the earth terrifying and enlightening those who dare to ride … along the razor's edge between hope and fear … " TITANOBOA! Okay, so the copy promoting Titanoboa sounds like it came from a bad […]
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Techno music kills dolphins
A "techno party" in Switzerland may have killed a dolphin at a nearby aquarium. The dolphin declined and died suddenly over the course of a couple of hours, and animal protection groups are concerned that loud music from the 16-hour party, which was less than 60 yards from the facility, stressed the animal to death. […]
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Minneapolis house gets by without a furnace or fireplace
A lot of people talk a good game about passive heating, but are they willing to face getting through a Minneapolis winter with no furnace and no fireplace? Paul Brazelton is. He recently finished retrofitting his home to become one of less than two dozen passivhauses in the U.S., which will mean facing 20-below winters […]
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Critical List: Carbon regulation starting; Chu to testify on Solyndra
A plant in Texas has qualified for the first greenhouse-gas permit in the United States. Any new project that affects greenhouse-gas concentrations will need to have one in the future — though, unlike this one, the permits won’t usually come from the EPA. Texas has just refused to issue its own greenhouse permits. Because we […]
