Grist List
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Republicans: We must protect children from energy efficiency
Republican Rep. Sandy Adams wants to limit funding for Department of Energy websites that educate kids about efficiency. She doesn't know how much money that will save, but by god, we must stop children learning at any cost!
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North Korea runs on wood-burning trucks
If you've ever wondered what we'll do after we've run out of cheap oil, other than eat each other, you have only to look to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a.k.a. North Korea. Ever since the shipments of crude from the USSR and China dried up, they've had to improvise.
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How a company you've never heard of could destroy the ocean ecosystem
Omega Protein, Inc. (a company you've never heard of) is quickly overfishing the Atlantic menhaden (a species you've never heard of). As a result, a number of fish that you have heard of -- striped bass, bluefish, tuna, dolphin, seatrout, and mackerel -- as well as the ocean ecosystem as a whole, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Long Island Sound (which you’ve heard of) are suffering.
Menhaden are tiny, bony, oily fish that humans can't eat, but which, according to marine scientists, are "the most important fish in the sea." Menhaden are the main consumers of phytoplankton, and without them, areas like the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound are clogged with algae. They are also a staple food for bigger, tastier fish, who, deprived of menhaden, are growing sad and malnourished.
In the past 25 years, the menhaden population has shrunk from 160 billion to about 20 billion. -
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NYPD puts 50 Chevy Volt cruisers on the streets
The next time you're sitting in the bus lane, humming "Don't pull me over Mr. Officer" as NYC's finest ambles up to your window to ask for your license and registration, check your rear-view mirror. If you're lucky, you can take solace in the fact that you've just been nabbed by an officer driving one of the city's 50 brand new plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt cruisers.
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Study: Earth losing its climate change defenses
Like your body, the planet can heal itself a little bit. Some places, like forests and oceans, are carbon sinks -- they absorb carbon from the atmosphere, slowing down the rate at which everything goes to hell. But climate change is no papercut, and as it gets worse, it’s actually breaking the planet’s immune system. Two new studies in Nature argue that two types of carbon sinks -- oceans and soil -- are becoming less effective as climate change advances.
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Bikes — and rollerbladers — beat plane in Carmageddon race
What happens when L.A. is debilitated by repairs on a 10-mile stretch of freeway? Some people hop on a 35-mile plane ride to bypass it. And others get on their bikes and make it there in half the time.
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Critical List: Yellowstone pipe could have carried tar-sands oil; L.A. survived Carmageddon
The Yellowstone River spill could have included heavier, more corrosive tar-sands oil, federal officials said. This type of oil eats through pipes more quickly, and if ExxonMobiil was using those pipes to transport tar-sands oil, that decision could have contributed to the spill.
Carmageddon = over. And it turns out that, given the choice to avoid the freeway by plane or bike, it’s faster to bike.
It's not the best idea to buy meat from Japan right now. Just saying.
Your fish oil tablets are destroying marine ecosystems. -
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Play chutes and ladders on public transportation
The designers of this "Transit Accelerator" in the Dutch city of Utrecht have the right idea about making public transportation fun: turn it into a board game, or recess. What other inspiration can public transit take from childhood? Personally I'd like to see merry-go-round train cars where you ride on My Little Ponies.
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Mom who lost son in hit-and-run could face more jail time than driver
Raquel Nelson of Marietta and her three children were hit by a tipsy two-time hit-and-runner, Jerry L. Guy, in April 2010. Nelson's 4-year-old later died of his injuries. But prosecutors dropped a homicide charge against Guy, and he was sentenced to two years for hit-and-run and served only six months. Nelson, who was convicted this week of vehicular manslaughter for having the chutzpah to cross a street, could get 36 months -- six times longer than the man who killed her child.
