Recent Articles
New York City gets public solar-powered cell phone chargers
New York City gets public solar-pow...
PENSA These solar-powered flowers are now  sprouting up in New York, offering precious joules to cell phones drained by searching for 3G on the subway.  Design firm Pensa and solar company GoalZero will be testing the Street Charge... 
Here’s what it’s like to ride on a subway with the doors open
Here’s what it’s like to ride o...
What’s worse — a transit system that shuts down all the time because of malfunctions, or one that just powers through? St. Petersburg, Russia, chose the latter approach. This video shows what happens when a subway car’s... 
Here’s a guy running up a lava flow — and here’s why he still has legs
Here’s a guy running up a lava fl...
We strongly recommend that you do not use this method to get in touch, as it were, with the Earth. But as this video shows, it is technically possible to run over eight or 10 feet of red-hot lava and emerge with your limbs intact.... 
Occupy Sandy: Once welcomed, now questioned
Occupy Sandy: Once welcomed, now qu...
squirrel83 An incomplete section of the destroyed Rockaway Beach boardwalk in late May. Nearly eight months after Hurricane Sandy destroyed almost three miles of historic boardwalk along the Rockaway peninsula at the southern end... 
Map of place name origins proves that we all secretly live in a fantasy novel
Map of place name origins proves th...
Stephan Hormes and Silke Peust Click to embiggen. Unlace your bodice, put down your bastard sword, and stop trying to genetically engineer that goat into a unicorn — it turns out all you need to experience the thrill of living... 
Syngenta plays dirty to shape public opinion on herbicide
Syngenta plays dirty to shape publi...
Eric Constantineau As a journalist, it takes a lot to really piss me off: I’ve found that most scandals aren’t really scandals if you dig past the screaming headlines and into the wonky details. And, though I grew up... 
Hummingbird tree-sit could stop San Fran developers where occupiers failed
Hummingbird tree-sit could stop San...
When dozens of police officers in riot gear raided the occupied Hayes Valley Farm in San Francisco early last Thursday morning, it seemed like the end of the road for this garden space. Activists from around the Bay Area had moved... 
You want to ration my what?
You want to ration my what?...
Keijo Knutas Is this old-fashioned idea ready for a comeback? When Stan Cox’s Losing Our Cool questioned America’s fetish for air-conditioning in 2010, some very nasty comments reached his inbox. But Cox, an agricultural researcher... 
No, we’re not running out of people
No, we’re not running out of peop...
Shutterstock No shortage in sight. Every few months we see a spate of “news” stories warning that population growth rates are declining in the U.S. and/or the world, potentially leading to a shortage of babies and outright... 
Is foie gras always a faux pas? One family aims to humanely produce it
Is foie gras always a faux pas? One...
Foie gras is a controversial topic . It’s one of the most delicious foods on the planet, but conventional foie gras comes at the price of force-feeding ducks and geese.  Pateria de Sousa  is doing things differently. By following... 
How climate change makes wildfires worse
How climate change makes wildfires ...
DVIDSHUB An aircraft releases fire-retardant over Black Forest, Colo. Last year, Colorado suffered from a  record-breaking wildfire season : More than 4,000 fires resulted in six deaths, the destruction of 648 buildings, and a half... 
These beautiful photos make New York’s subway expansion look like a fairytale cave
These beautiful photos make New Yor...
Patrick Cashin New York is finally building another subway line on the East Side, and if these photos by Metropolitan Transit Authority staff photographer Patrick Cashin are to be believed, it will be a magical cave of wonders. Well,... 
Five pest species now immune to GMO corn and cotton
Five pest species now immune to GMO...
Shutterstock Yum, genetically engineered corn and cotton. That isn’t what most people would think. (Especially the cotton bit. And  especially  the GMO bit.) But a growing number of pests appear to share this sentiment. They’ve... 
Andrew Revkin, David Roberts, and you?
Andrew Revkin, David Roberts, and y...
Revkin and Roberts, last seen together in 2011. Andrew Revkin has been on the front lines of environmental journalism for decades. He picked up the climate story before many of us had heard of it. He’s best known for his Dot... 
Recycling, solar, and wind power team up to make a terrifying crab robot
Recycling, solar, and wind power te...
Who says solar and wind can’t provide enough energy for a modern lifestyle? This giant, terrifying robot with a geodesic dome shell and 12 crustaceanesque legs derives its power from a wind turbine and a roof-mounted solar panel.... 
The internet has some advice for you on recycling old clothes
The internet has some advice for yo...
Just wait til that new unitard isn’t cool anymore. Last week, Jezebel’s Doug Barry was all , “AAA! Throwing away clothes is shockingly bad for the environment! And 45 percent of your donated clothes are shipped overseas... 
Organic farming sucks (up carbon)
Organic farming sucks (up carbon)...
R. R. Smith / USDA Cover crops like red clover could be the factor allowing organic farms to sequester carbon dioxide. We’ve known for a while now that organic agriculture is good for the climate: It does a better job at grabbing... 
New tool shows you how much money you can save by switching to an electric car
New tool shows you how much money y...
On average, it costs $2.51 more to fill a conventional car with a gallon of gas than to charge an electric car to go the same distance, according to the Department of Energy’s new eGallon tool. It may be an even bigger difference... 
Awesome bike parking system sucks your ride into the depths of the earth
Awesome bike parking system sucks y...
Giken Seisakusho Bikes are great and all, but as more people start cycling instead of driving, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to create new slabs of empty asphalt on which to park bikes. A better solution is Japan’s... 
Coal companies get sweetheart deals on federal leases, shortchange taxpayers
Coal companies get sweetheart deals...
Shutterstock As if climate disruption , air pollution , health problems , and landscape destruction weren’t bad enough, here’s another reason to hate the coal industry: Coal companies are shortchanging U.S. taxpayers out of... 

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