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Critical List: Court upholds local fracking ban; New York could ban shark fin sales
A New York state court upheld the town of Dryden’s ban on fracking. Republicans are trying to pin rising gas prices on President Obama. Apple could allow independent environmental reviews of two factories in China. Chinese air pollution is visible from space.
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Here’s what the night sky ought to look like (i.e. AMAZING)
Here’s your nature porn for the day: a long exposure of the night sky over the aptly named Very Large Telescope array in Chile. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/36154212]
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Newt Gingrich wants to colonize the moon
Newt Gingrich is gunning to become our first nerd president, and obviously a nerd president’s first order of business is securing voting rights for the moon. (Maybe right after knighting George Lucas.) Gingrich wants to establish a “permanent base on the moon” by the end of his first term, and once it has 13,000 people […]
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Holy crap, solar storm!
YOU GUYS THAT’S WHAT THE SUN LOOKS LIKE RIGHT NOW. (Sort of. It’s a false-color composite of some UV photography of what the sun looks like right now. But it’s still pretty rad.) That up there in the upper right corner is the biggest solar storm in seven years, and a coronal mass ejection from […]
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Scientists discover color of galaxy, can only describe it in poetry
We went back and forth on whether this would be relevant to your interests, but it's about the universe and the Earth is in the universe, right? I think that's a non-controversial scientific statement even Rick Santorum would agree with. (Maybe. Does Rick Santorum believe in the galaxy?) Anyway, astronomers have found the exact color the Milky Way galaxy would appear if you were standing outside it, and it turns out it is a color that can only be expressed in poetry.
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Metal balls apparently falling from sky
This … thingy fell out of the sky over Namibia last month. It's 3.6 feet around, weighs 13 pounds, is hollow, has no markings, and … came out of space? Talk about your extreme weather. Is it space junk? Military equipment? A decades-late Spaceballs promo? (Spaceballs the lunchbox! Spaceballs the breakfast cereal! Spaceballs the mysterious […]
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Critical List: Scientists find Earth 2.0; rootworms defeat Monsanto corn
Scientists found a planet that looks an awful lot like Earth. One U.N. leader says that even an international treaty won't ensure the world avoids dangerous climate change. And we don't even have that! Rootworms are developing a resistance to Monsanto's Bt corn, and scientists get to say "I told you so." The Carbon War […]
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Critical List: Fox News is already trying to discredit the IPCC; an asteroid’s passing Earth
Cute. Fox News is trying to discredit the IPCC before its latest report’s even out. This wind turbine, which looks kind of like a kitchen strainer, has 30 blades, makes less noise than the three-blade models, and is more energy efficient. As climate change sets in, some animals will get smaller, but some will grow. […]
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Watch a climate satellite get launched
NASA's new weather satellite — which in typical NASA acronym-happy fashion, is called the NPP, standing for NPOESS Preparatory Project, standing for National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System — is a state-of-the-art way to measure climate impacts. The satellite will monitor ozone levels, temperatures, vegetation cover, ice cover, air pollution, and other effects of climate change, […]