Grist List
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Cool new game is like SimCity for the whole environment
Is environmentalism a GAME to you? Does it look like some kind of GAME??? Oh, it doesn't? Well, it could. Upcoming game Anno 2070 lets you go all Sims on the fate of the planet.
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Whales hanging out in New York
First dolphins, now whales — sea mammals in New York City are bigger than Cats! Urban nature blogger Matthew Wills caught a humpback whale frolicking off Sandy Hook, N.J., within sight of the city. (He's got some great pictures over at his blog.) Wills was dismayed by the floating trash in the bay, not to […]
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Teenage genius improves solar panels using math and trees
You gotta heart teenage geniuses: this one, Aidan Dwyer, age 13, figured out a way to make solar panel arrays more efficient after taking a walk in the woods. Here is his basic thought-process, broken down for us non-geniuses:
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How to turn raw sewage into profit
For most people, having a open stream of sewage running past your backyard is a problem, not an asset. That how Keshav Tavre, who lives in Bhiwandi, India, saw it, until he decided to set up a homemade filtration system. With a series of walls and layers of soil, he was able to filter the sewage until it was clean enough to use to grow crops. Later, he sold water commercially do local dye industries.
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Critical List: New York AG going after natural gas companies; species move one mile north each year
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed three energy companies as part of an investigation into natural gas production estimates.
If rats could abandon Ship Earth, they would right about now. Instead, species in the Northern Hemisphere are moving north at about a mile per year — three times faster than anyone imagined.
Kick your caffeine habit now: climate change could make 60 percent of the places that now grow coffee inhospitable to the crop by 2050. -
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Google's open-source, wireless, smartphone-controlled lightbulb
Google continues to roll out new details about its wirelessly-controlled “smart” lightbulb, which gets around all the problems usually associated with making a home energy-aware. The latest: the company is working on open-source software that will run on the lightbulbs themselves.
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Why Michele Bachmann thinks she can get gas under $2 a gallon
Michele Bachmann isn't crazy -- she's just horribly misinformed. At least in this particular instance: When Bachmann promised that if she became president, gas would be under $2 a gallon, her statement was entirely consistent with the voodoo alternate energy universe she and countless right-wing conspiracy theorists happen to inhabit.
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Which eco-friendly food labels are meaningful, and which are just hot air?
Certified organic ... chemical free ... dolphin-safe ... the stamps and slogans on food labels make a lot of promises, but can they back it up? Audobon magazine breaks down which labels are meaningful and which are USDA-certified bull crap.
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Infographic: How many jobs would solar create?
Stronger solar policies could create over 100,000 jobs in just a few years, according to this (excerpted) infographic from One Block Off the Grid. That's not a lot, proportional to the unemployment crisis, but given that CERTAIN PEOPLE are always talking about sustainable energy as a job-killer, it's pretty good. And jobs would only go up […]
