Grist List

Here's a food label people can understand at a glance

Designer Renee Walker's food labels, which just won the Rethink the Food Label contest, are elegantly simple. They're dominated by a color-coded box that shows the breakdown of ingredients, including unappetizing shades of gray for additives and preservatives. So in one glance you can tell, say, which of these peanut butters has added filler and which one is mostly ground-up nuts. 

Born after 1976? You've never experienced normal global temperatures

If you're under 35 and you think you've lived through a cold year, you're wrong. Think Progress notes that the last year mean global temperatures were below normal was 1976.

That means more than a quarter of the population (and statistically more people reading this, since it’s on the internet) really has no idea what the global climate would feel like if humanity hadn't been messing with it for more than a century.

Critical List: Wind power can be dangerous; the U.S. gets average marks on clean energy

Wind power's not entirely safe: A watchdog group warns that "one of these days, a turbine's going to fall on someone.”

The U.S. gets a C for renewable energy development from an alternative energy analyst.

Colorado's going to require fracking companies to disclose what's in their fracking fluid.

The natural gas boom is also creating demand for silica sand.

Here’s how the debt deal could spell doomsday for climate and energy

The debt deal Washington just passed is going to pit defense spending against the budgets of the DOE, EPA and incentives for clean energy production, GOP strategist Mike McKenna tells Politico.

How to get into urban beekeeping

This video on rooftop beekeeping in Brooklyn features Tim O'Neal, who blogs at Borough Bees and sometimes teaches Beekeeping 101. If you've been curious about putting together an urban apiary, this will give you an overview of what it's like and why it's good for the world. (Also, handy advice: "[Bees] are somewhat less chatty […]

Swede finds out why nuclear, unlike renewables, can never be DIY

Blog your experience building a nuclear reactor in your kitchen, go to jail. Them's the laws in Sweden, where the no nerd's supervillain-esque childhood fantasy fulfillment goes unpunished.

World's largest artificial floating island anticipates, causes climate change

Sure, it's got solar panels on the roof, but let's face it -- the world's largest floating island, which hosts an entertainment complex catering to the first world denizens of Seoul, South Korea, isn't exactly carbon neutral. That doesn't mean it isn't a valuable addition to the corpus of public works projects as thought experiments in how to create a sustainable, climate disaster-proof future.

LEDs can double as data transmitters, save even more energy

Here is one more totally awesome reason that we should be switching out incandescents for LED lightbulbs: a new technology means a single LED can transmit more data than a cellular tower. Prof. Harald Haas demonstrates in this TEDGlobal talk:

The lightbulb is flickering on and off too fast for the human eye to detect.

NASA will clean up contaminated soil with salad dressing

There's an upside to the end of the space shuttle program: Now that the shuttle has been grounded, NASA can turn its attention to acres of contaminated soil and groundwater, the result of chemical spills from shuttle launches. And they're doing it in a novel way: with an oil-based emulsion that's made of corn and looks like dressing. The technique was first designed in scribbles on the back of a napkin, perhaps after eating a salad.