Climate Technology
All Stories
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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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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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Why is Michelle Obama’s food initiative promoting Walmart?
At Michelle Obama's event announcing that several retailers will open stores in "food deserts," James Gavin said he'd like to see Walmart double its U.S. store count.
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The top 12 women of cleantech
While the clean-energy sector is very much a boy's club, women are starting to break down the clubhouse door. Here's a list of top women in cleantech.
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Largest commercial aircraft deal in history goes green
American Airlines just spent $38 billion on fuel efficient airplanes.
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'Solar highways' transform our crumbling infrastructure into something useful
Okay, we know YOU ride your bike everywhere. But the country’s 4 million miles of roads, and 50,000 miles of interstate highway, probably aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Isn’t there anything productive we can do with this giant car playground? Well, we can cover it with solar photovoltaic panels, so it’s at least providing some energy.
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Nuclear power's new marketing strategy: hide behind some windmills
The tagline on this advertisement for German Atomic Forum ("founded in 1959 to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy in Germany") is "CO2 Emissions = Zero."
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Thanks to the recession, recycling is booming
A few years ago, the only people who came in to Alliance Recycling in Emeryville, Calif., were were pushing shopping carts. Now, the same center is seeing people pull up in late model cars.
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Critical List: Mitt Romney doesn’t believe in carbon; Halliburton’s profits are up
Mitt Romney doesn't think carbon is a pollutant and doesn't think the EPA should regulate it. But he has said that we should reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases. May he doesn't understand what those words mean?
The hybrid electric flying car! (Brought to you by the military-industrial complex.)
Climate change could wipe out whitebark pine trees in the West, but the Fish and Wildlife Service can't be bothered to list the trees as endangered, or even threatened. -
In the future, cleaning robots will sniff out air pollution
Researchers at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science have kitted out a Roomba -- you know, one of those robotic vacuum cleaners that cats ride around on and act out Citizen Kane -- to evaluate air quality. Lights on the Roomba indicate the presence of evaporated alcohol, and a long-exposure photo, above, can show which parts of a room are clean and which are fumey. Blue lights in the above photo mean that the robot detected polluted air.
