innovation
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Scrounging for a green angle to the Large Hadron Collider experiment
Courtesy SBARTSTV via Youtube.Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday succeeded in smashing subatomic particles together at 99 percent of the speed of light, which is more than three times the highest levels previously recorded. This is a big freaking deal that could revolutionize the study of particle physics, according to people […]
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‘Britain’s Appalachia’ engineers a brighter post-coal future
Can renewable energy turn Wales as clean and shiny as the Cardiff waterfront?Courtesy ttfnrob via FlickrThe sparkling, sanitized waterfront of Cardiff, Wales, reveals barely a hint of the country’s grimy industrial past. Where one of the busiest ports anywhere once shipped Welsh coal out into the world, a complex of upscale shops, pubs, and restaurants […]
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Jeff Goodell: ‘It’s a bad idea for geoengineering to be the equivalent of the Pompeii sex room’
Jeff Goodell.To head off the worst impacts of climate change, should human beings deliberately engineer the earth’s climate? Or rather, should they try, with uncertain odds of success and at least some chance of inadvertent catastrophe? Should they even learn how, or would the knowledge itself wreak havoc? These are the sorts of questions journalist […]
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Digital designer shows what future towns could look like
[vodpod id=Video.16106617&w=425&h=350&fv=] Honolulu, HawaiiIllustrations courtesy Urban Advantage Imagine some ugly, underused street in your town, marked by drab buildings, wide streets, and forbidding expanses of parking lot. If you have to go here at all, chances are you’d prefer to drive. Now imagine it remade into a place where you’d actually want to walk or […]
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Bill Gates and our innovation addiction: A recipe for climate inaction
Bill Gates’ recent entry into the discussion about climate action and technology is welcome. Not only is Gates a very smart guy and one of the world’s leading philanthropists, but he also has at least the reputation of knowing what he is talking about when it comes to technology and innovation. That being said, his […]
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Obama’s ‘director of game changers’ talks energy breakthroughs
Arun Majumdar, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, spoke at the University of Washington last Friday on the need to fund ambitious energy research.Grist photo/Jonathan Hiskes When the Soviet Sputnik beat American satellites into space in 1957, the U.S. tried to reclaim its technological edge by creating the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which […]
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Why Bill Gates is wrong
Bill Gates is sad that David Roberts thinks he’s wrong.Photo: redmaxwell via FlickrBill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, made waves last week when, at the much-celebrated tech conference TED, he proclaimed that climate change is the most important problem facing the planet. Wo0t! Obviously having someone of Gates’ stature supporting the clean energy race […]
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The 10 greenest and brownest things about Vancouver
Courtesy Ecstaticist via FlickrAll eyes are on are Vancouver this month — not just on the Olympics, but on the city itself. Is the world’s biggest athletic circus making the city a better place to live in the long term? A worse one? Or is it just putting the global spotlight on strengths and weaknesses […]
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Bill Gates thinks about energy innovation
Bill Gates has written on his blog that we need “innovation, not just insulation” in order to reduce CO2 to manageable levels. His motivation is robust, but his thinking is … far from clear. Because he’s Bill Gates, this is sure to attract attention, but even if he weren’t, this is worth talking about. It […]