Grist List

Mitt Romney's energy policy crafted by coal-funded shill

It should surprise no one that Mitt Romney's pro-coal, anti-carbon regulations energy plan was crafted by a coal zombie, but here are the deets anyway: Jim Talent, a key Romney advisor, leads a lobbying firm that took $125,000 from Peabody Energy to promote coal-related interests.

Fiddling while his state burns isn't just a metaphor for Perry, says Thomas Friedman

Oh look -- America's most-read liberal just devoted an entire column to climate change, or should we say climate weirding. It's nice to see the talking points we feed you, our climate hawk minions, repeated so succinctly in a national forum. There were even a few new ones we hadn't thought of yet:

NYC's bikeshare will have 10,000 bikes

New York is a big city, and most of its residents really hate driving (for good reason). So it seems appropriate that the city's planned bikeshare program, launching next summer, will be by far the largest in the U.S. Its 10,000 bikes will dwarf the 1,100 available from D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare, currently the country's largest. And the range will go from the Upper West Side all the way down into Brooklyn.

Indigenous Alaskans have no doubt the climate is changing

The U.S. Geological Survey had a novel idea about how to better understand climate change and its impacts: Ask the people most likely to be experiencing it. These researchers asked a group of people from Alaska's indigenous communities what their observations of climate change had been. Their basic response: Everything's all messed up.

Critical List: Congress holds Solyndra hearing; Bill Gates pushes for more clean energy funding

Lawmakers want to talk about Solyndra, its federal funding, and its bankruptcy. Solyndra execs realized that if they don't come to Washington, they don't have to talk about any of that. For good measure they may build a pillow fort to hide in.

Congress is still going to talk about it, of course. And probably use some strongly worded language.

A day before this hearing, Bill Gates and a bunch of other rich guys urged Congress to invest more in clean energy. #badtiming

Roundup weed killer is showing up in air and water

Hey, what's even better than weed killer being sprayed on crops you eventually eat? How about if it then ends up in air, water, and even rain? AWESOME. I SEE NO POSSIBLE DOWN SIDE TO THIS PLAN.

Seriously, this is pretty alarming news: Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have detected the active ingredient of Roundup, a chemical called glyphosate, in waterways, air, and rain. On the one hand: Those raindrops have no weeds in them, by God. On the other hand: Everything else about this.

Got trash? Put a kitten in it.

The Etsy shop Atomic Attic makes upcycled pet beds and feeding trays out of old suitcases and vintage electronics, thus making use of a cat's natural tendency to sit on any damn thing you happen to have lying around. My dog wouldn't fit in a suitcase — maybe a steamer trunk — but I love […]

Google, Facebook reap benefits of building hot data centers in cold Scandinavia

Data centers are the gigantic, Borg-like assemblages of computers that run everything we take for granted on the web, from email to social networks. They take a lot of energy, because they do all the things, but more than that they take a lot of cooling; keeping data centers from overheating requires up to half […]

Gigantic flywheels recover, recycle subway trains' energy

If subway stations could harvest the energy of incoming trains as they hit their brakes, they could re-use that same energy to launch the same train as it leaves the station. That's the idea behind Vycon flywheels, which are gigantic spinning wheels that act as temporary energy storage mechanisms.