Environment

Joel Salatin advocates a better way to raise food

Meet the best, loudest (and only) Christian-libertarian-capitalist-environmentalist-lunatic farmer on the face of planet Earth. Joel Salatin, self-professed owner of that lengthy honorific, has a personality bigger than the Grain Belt and a genius for farming that has made him a glib, brilliant prophet to a growing movement of back-to-nature farmers from ...

Hacked global warming e-mails – what’s new?

(Note: We're keeping this story updated as new developments unfold.) When the news broke that "more than 169 megabytes worth of global-warming emails and related files were either hacked and/or leaked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Center in Britain and released to the world via the ...

E-waste recycling – are solutions near?

Last week, US Rep. Mike Thompson (D) of California introduced a resolution calling on Congress to better manage disposal of old electronics, or e-waste. The resolution, now in the Committee on House Administration, proposes that the legislative branch recycle its obsolete computers, monitors, cellphones, and other electronic equipment exclusively with recyclers ...

Plant scientists build a ‘Sears catalog’ for corn genome

Plant scientists announced last week they have built the foundation for a complete catalog for corn genes, with far-reaching implications for humanity's food supply. Researchers have been working on the genome-sequencing project for four years. The draft sequence, now 95 percent complete, has given scientists a point of comparison they can ...

Hacked climate emails: conspiracy or tempest in a teapot?

For all its gee-whiz discoveries and its influence on public policy, science can be a messy, sometimes ugly enterprise. When the science is paleontology, astronomy, or geophysics, internal politics, thinly or not-so-thinly veiled personal attacks, and water-cooler discussions among influential scientists about whose research is junk and not worth publishing draw ...

How will California’s new TV energy standards affect you?

On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission approved new energy-efficiency standards to regulate how much electricity television sets sold in the state can consume. When do the standards take effect? Jan. 1, 2011, with more stringent rules kicking in two years later. Do they apply to the TV sets I currently own? No. ...

Economists put a price tag on the benefits of coral reefs

In recent decades, coral reef ecosystems around the world have declined dramatically. One-fifth have died, according to a 2004 World Wildlife Fund assessment, and human activity directly threatens another 24 percent. As atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increase, scientists say that higher temperatures and ocean acidification could kill 70 percent of ...

The hidden costs of fossil fuels - and biofuels, too

A new report by the National Research Council seeks to put a dollar amount on the “hidden” costs of energy produced by burning fossil fuels. These costs aren’t factored into the market prices of coal, oil, and gasoline, or the prices of electricity generated by fossil fuels, the report says. But ...

Two big advantages of closed-loop geothermal systems

When our heating contractor Tony Silverio told us we had a choice between a closed loop and an open loop geothermal system, our first inclination was simply to go with the least expensive. That’s in part because we already knew we’d be spending significantly more upfront for a geothermal system than ...

‘Going Rogue’: Is Sarah Palin a creationist?

In her memoir, "Going Rogue," Sarah Palin reveals that she has creationist leanings, explicitly rejecting the belief that humans and other species evolved from a common lineage. There's no precise definition of "creationism," but the term generally encompasses those who oppose all or part of the theory – held almost universally ...