Climate Technology
All Stories
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Thar and Thar and Thar She Blows
Southern Right Whales Rebounding in South African Waters In a rare bit of good news about the marine environment, southern right whales are making an impressive comeback in the waters of South Africa. The mammals were pushed to the brink of extinction by whaling until protections were put in place in 1935; in recent years, […]
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Coffee Roasting on an Open Fire
Eco-Friendly “Java Log” Aims for More of the Fake Firewood Market Ah, winter — icicles on the eves, smoke rising from the chimneys, a crackling fire, and emerging from it, that fragrant, familiar smell of … coffee? Yep, that’s right: A Canadian company is marketing fake logs made of recycled coffee grounds. Other fake logs, […]
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Solar Flair
U.S. Companies Are Getting Hip to Solar A growing number of U.S. companies are installing solar-power systems at their facilities, driven at least in part by government tax credits and incentives that make solar more financially attractive. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has built a large solar installation on the roof of a major facility […]
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Dollars Without Sense
Privatizing Forest Service Jobs Would Cost More, Study Finds A Bush administration plan to privatize hundreds of U.S. Forest Service jobs, from wildlife biologists to safety officers, would cost taxpayers more than continuing to pay federal employees, a new agency study has found. Under the Bush plan, as many as one-fourth of all 40,000 USFS […]
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Cheap Tricks I
Toyota Says Hybrids Can Be Inexpensive to Manufacture Defying conventional wisdom, Toyota unveiled its new hybrid-car production site in Toyota City, Japan, yesterday and sent a clear message to other automakers: Gas-electric hybrids can be manufactured inexpensively. Such cars have traditionally been thought of as too costly to be practical, and Toyota and Honda, the […]
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Cheap Tricks II
New Solar Panels Would Be Inefficient — and Inexpensive Usually, inefficient energy sources are an environmentalist’s worse nightmare — but the opposite might be the case for a new type of solar cell. True, the new cells would only capture about 10 percent of the sun’s energy (roughly half of what conventional solar cells capture), […]
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The Fairest of Them All
Fair-Trade Food Starts to Catch on in the U.S. Hey, you — sipping the fair-trade, shade-grown, organic coffee. How would you like a fair-trade banana with that? Or a fair-trade chocolate bar? A small but growing number of products in U.S. grocery stores carry a fair-trade label issued by TransFair USA, based in Oakland, Calif., […]
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Say It Ain’t Soy
Brazil Will Allow Planting of GM Soybeans In a big blow to opponents of biotechnology, Brazil announced last week that it will allow farmers to plant genetically modified soybeans, ending its role as one of the leading nations opposed to GM crops. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government had previously promised to oppose […]
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Enemy Mine II
Malaysian Mining Industry Is Getting a Second Wind Twenty years after a glut in the global tin market sent the Malaysia mining industry into a freefall, the country’s miners are lobbying for a second chance — this time, with coal. Recently, prospectors in Malaysia found nearly 237 million tons of new coal reserves. That’s good […]
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MTBE Promises
Energy Bill Likely to Include Liability Protections for MTBE Makers The makers of a gasoline additive that can contaminate groundwater will almost certainly be protected from liability issues under the terms of the nation’s energy bill, negotiators of the legislation announced yesterday. Methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, has been added to gasoline since the […]
