Grist List

Tea Party: Don't build public transit, because the terrorists might attack it

Apparently public transit is now helping the terrorists win. That's according to a Tea Party group in Georgia, at least. The group wants to 86 a light rail project because "when they [THE TERRORISTS!!] blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt." So we should not build rail in the first place, because in the event of terrorism it would cease to work. Makes sense!

To be fair, the dude who said that also seemed to be ok with a bus system, because in his words "if the terrorist blow up a single bus, we can work around that." 

You want a war on cars? Fine, here's your war on cars

The Stranger, Seattle's alt-weekly, has had it with the nasty attacks from car-loving, carbon-spewing, anti-bike crazies. The city's bike advocates have been accused of waging a "war on cars," and after too many hours trying to defend itself, the Stranger got angry:

For cars we have paved our forests, spanned our lakes, and burrowed under our cities. Yet drivers throw tantrums at the painting of a mere bicycle lane on the street. ... No more! We demand that car drivers pay their own way, bearing the full cost of the automobile-petroleum-industrial complex that has depleted our environment, strangled our cities, and drawn our nation into foreign wars. Reinstate the progressive motor vehicle excise tax, hike the gas tax, and toll every freeway, bridge, and neighborhood street until the true cost of driving lies as heavy and noxious as our smog-laden air.

Other demands: mass transit should serve the masses, and walking and biking should be safe. Maybe it is war.

Hey, we found a new dolphin species!

We all know the Earth still has more and stranger species than we've discovered, or at least it will until we clear-cut and climate-bomb them right into extinction. But you usually figure these fragile exotic lifeforms are hanging out in caves under Madagascar, or somewhere else that's tough to get to. Turns out, though, that at least some of them have been chiling near Melbourne, Australia, where researchers have discovered a new species of dolphin just basically right under their noses. 

Critical List: Climate change kills jobs; making a bridge out of live trees

Climate change kills jobs: A new study says California's economy could take a hit in the hundreds of millions of dollars as climate change takes it toll. So really, any program that fights climate change should be considered a job-saving program.

Job creation may be a different story. Loan guarantees for green energy projects aren't creating as many jobs as the Obama administration promised.

Green groups in Texas are growing, which means staffing up. (Now green is good for jobs again!)

Cargill likes salmonella-tainted turkey so much, they produced it twice in two months

Is Cargill switching production to all tainted turkey all the time? We'd think the market for that wasn't big, but only a month after issuing a massive recall for salmonella-tainted turkey (associated with at least one death), the food giant is ... issuing a massive recall for salmonella-tainted turkey. You guys, I think ... I think it's a glitch in the Matrix!

The iPhone game that will make you ashamed for having an iPhone

Aw look, it's Phone Story, a fun little game where you produce things and catch things and shoot things at people! It's like Farmville AND Cut the Rope AND Angry Birds! Except that instead of saving your eggs or feeding your dinosaur, you're simulating the production of your iPhone -- which means you're actually abusing workers and manipulating consumers in order to score your points.

Best way to convince deniers: Butter them up

Well, it turns out Dave Roberts has been going about this talking to climate skeptics thing all wrong. If you want to get people to consider data that doesn't fit with their pet worldview, you should make them think really hard about how great they are. Then they'll be putty in your hands! And if you don't believe me, have I mentioned how fetching you look today?

Shocker: BP oil spill was BP's fault

A federal report, based on an investigation by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, has officially placed the blame for the BP oil spill at the feet of -- who knew? -- BP.

Scientists are about to test a scheme to cool the Earth

If the world is getting hotter because it's absorbing too much sunlight, why not put up a sunshade? That's the question Montgomery Burns has often asked, and one that scientists in the UK will begin to answer this October when they will use a weather balloon to loft a hose a little more than half a mile into the sky. They'll then pump water up the hose into the atmosphere. If that sounds simplistic to you, maybe you just don’t understand science.