Texas
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Critical List: Lorax tops box office; climate change worsened Texas drought
Grist is not so keen on the movie version of The Lorax, but the rest of the country is, apparently: The movie topped box offices this weekends. In Illinois, two cars crashed into a major oil pipeline, shutting it down. BP’s going to pay $7.8 billion to settle Deepwater Horizon claims, according to a settlement […]
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Critical List: China’s emissions outstrip America’s; Bill Gates hearts geoengineering
By 2015, China will emit 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the United States does. The Texas drought has forced some towns to ship in their water by truck. Bill Gates is underwriting geoengineering lobbying efforts.
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Critical List: Connecting climate change to the Texas heat wave; ditching plastic straws
Climate scientist James Hansen says he can prove that climate change caused the Texas heat wave. Maine fishermen caught more lobster last year than ever before. Wave and tidal energy could provide enough electricity to meet 15 percent of current demand in the United States. In London, plastic straws are the new plastic bags. No […]
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Red color in Texas river turns out to be pig blood
Apologies for starting off y’all’s Monday mornings on the grossest note possible, but this story was too appalling not to share. In Texas, near Dallas, an amateur drone pilot snapped a pic of a suspiciously red creek. (Weird, we know! But just get past that bit.) The drone pilot decided it was suspicious enough to […]
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Critical List: Republicans still pushing Keystone; Yosemite to limit Half Dome hikes
House Republicans just can’t let go of the Keystone XL pipeline. Speaker Boehner now says it could be part of a bill expanding domestic energy production. The value of renewable energy deals grew by two-fifths last year, which means, according to analysts, that businesses like wind and solar are “maturing.” Yosemite could limit the number […]
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Buckle up for more weather weirdness, America
Last year, the climate phenomenon La Niña messed with everyone’s heads. La Niña conditions mean that the ocean temperature in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean are colder than usual, and this was responsible for (among other things) the uncannily warm winter that the Northeast has been having. Sorry, can’t blame that on climate change! Yet. NASA’s […]
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Clean energy policies create more jobs than Keystone
Obama is poised to reject Keystone XL this afternoon, so brace for a lot of Republican bellyaching about how he obviously doesn’t care about jobs. There is a problem with this line of argument, and it’s that it is nonsense. Don’t believe us? Check out this graph, from ThinkProgress, which shows how Obama administration policies […]
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New Agtivist: Kandace Vallejo is working for food access in the heart of Texas
Kandace Vallejo.Construction workers may not be the most obvious constituency for a preacher of the locavore gospel. Yet in the airy stretches of Austin’s Pecan Springs neighborhood, Kandace Vallejo is making inroads from her perch in a bright blue building set on two acres. As membership programs coordinator at the Workers Defense Project (WDP), a […]
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Critical List: The shortest day of the year; some grey wolves to come off endangered species list
Today marks the solstice: the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter. Things will only get better from here on out, as long as by “things” you mean “the amount of daylight available in the Northern hemisphere.” Grey wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will be taken off the endangered species list. […]