Grist List
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Industry threatens university over anti-coal sculpture
Chris Drury, a British artist, created this sculpture, entitled Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around, to express the idea that (JUST POSSIBLY) Wyoming's coal industry and its contributions to climate change had something to do with the explosion of pine beetles in the state. (Warmer winters have allowed them to thrive.)
The sculpture happens to be installed at the University of Wyoming, which receives just a tiiiiiny bit of funding from the coal industry, like only a couple million dollars.
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Where do greenhouse gases come from?
This chart from the United Nations Environment Programme (click to embiggen) looks complicated, sort of like a traffic sign cross-bred with a banyan tree. But it basically just traces the path of greenhouse gases from polluting industries, through uses, out into the atmosphere. So you can tell at a glance, for instance, that energy industries […]
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Tennessee is getting 1,000 tons of nuclear waste from Germany
Oak Ridge, Tenn., a city with a long history of living alongside nuclear industries, will be processing nuclear waste from Germany. They’ll be taking on almost 1,000 tons of material, and the shipments could start coming this year. NPR reports:
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Critical List: Melting Arctic ice pollutes; wind farm could kill bald eagles
Melting Arctic ice is releasing banned chemicals like DDT, which were trapped there back when they were legal.
Post-tornado clean-up in Joplin, Mo. is going slowly.
Can water heaters store energy captured by wind turbines and solar panels? A startup called GridMobility thinks so. -
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Amazing bamboo bike is grown, not manufactured
The complicated weave of the Ajiro bike would be work-intensive to achieve through conventional means -- it takes a lot of energy to bend bamboo stalks into shape. So instead, design student Alexander Vittouris tensioned the bamboo over a mold as it grew, then harvested a completed bike frame.
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Meet your newest green candidate: Double Rainbow guy
It turns out that Double Rainbow guy, everyone's favorite non-cat meme producer since Tay Zonday, has a name (it's Paul Vasquez) and a face (it's sort of Cheech Marin meets Hurley). He also has an alternative energy platform and a presidential campaign, of sorts. A Facebook app called Votocracy allows normal (for some value of "normal") people to declare their candidacy, garner votes, and even debate each other in a sort of American Idolesque shadow campaign.
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Why doesn't the U.S. government allow teleworking when it's hot?
Feds are allowed to stay home when it snows, but not when it's so hot that the pavement is literally melting. Wha?
