Photo via the New Republic It's a widely held notion that politicians have long been in the pocket of Big Oil. And there's good reason for that perception: oil companies' huge campaign donations, vast lobbying power, and close ties to politicians have ensured that their taxes remain low , that hidden subsidies are around to provide extra funding, and that they receive preferential treatment in US energy policy. But there could be a new, ... View original post here: The Next Big Oil: Big Smart Grid?
So there really isn't anything that deep to this image. It's just a (more or less) life-sized blue whale eye. And on the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society site you can educate yourself/be mesmerized/ waste some time for a while staring at it while the entire life-sized animal scrolls across your browser window. Believe me, it's way cooler than you might think:... Read more from the original source: Ever See a Blue Whale Life-Sized on Your Computer? Now You Can
published January 31, 2011 and has No Comments
Chimpanzees share over 90 percent of their DNA with humans -- but the similarities between these two species seems to extend beyond genetics alone. For what is believed to be the very first time, researchers have captured the behavior of a female chimp mourning over her recently deceased 16-month-old child, detailing how non-human primates respond to death. This moving ...
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Photo: Flickr, ca2hill , CC When I wrote my reactions to Obama's State of the Union address last week, I mentioned how disappointing it was that he didn't take the chance to engage the American public on the issue of climate change. The most common retort to this was along the lines of well, actions speak louder than words ...
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Fracking, or Fracing as the oil and gas industry ungrammatically spells it, is short for hydraulic fracturing , and the technology is now being used extensively to extract shale gas, by pumping liquids at high pressure into the rock, creating and expanding fissures. The liquid is a mix of chemicals designed to carry a proppant , perhaps sand or ...
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Image: SierraActivist.org Questions are looming over why the State Department won't release its correspondence with Paul Elliott, a former campaign staffer for Hillary Clinton and current oil lobbyist who is seeking Clinton's approval for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline that would connect Canada with refineries in Texas, and run through six states in between.... Read the full ...
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Photo: Nissan Capacity: 200,000 Batteries a Year Compared to getting the batteries right, getting the rest of an electric car right is relatively easy. After all, most of the rest of the vehicle is pretty similar to what automakers are already doing, and an electric vehicle is mechanically much simpler than a gasoline or diesel vehicle (the power electronics ...
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Last week BuildingGreen published Green Building Product Certifications , A wonderful and useful guide with everything one needs to understand what labels actually mean and how to use them. I wish it had come out a month earlier; I had been asked to do a lecture on Labels and green product certifications last Friday at the Interior Design Show ...
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Images via Climate Progress File this one under "Big Surprise". The Wall Street Journal has long been revered as the standard bearer for American business journalism -- so it should be no revelation that the WSJ's op-ed page leads the pack in refutations to climate science. Addressing climate change is still considered anathema to the business community, which envisions ...
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A quick update on the status of a proposed road that would bisect Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and potentially destroy the world renowned annual wildebeest migration . According to Mongabay , the World Bank has offered to fund an alternative route for the road which bypass the park. Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union's Dr Barbara Mass described the ...
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Photo: Wikipedia , Public domain. If You Insist on Car-Commuting, At Least Fill it Up With People! Thanks to modern social networking technologies and mobile computing, finding people to carpool with has never been easier. But sadly, that doesn't seem to be enough. The popularity of carpooling is in sharp decline in the US, down about 50% since 1980s, ...
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photo: Eric E Castro / Creative Commons A quick update on some technological shake out in biofuels: Renewable Energy World reports that Shell has quit its last agreement in Read the rest here: Shell Quits Last Algae Biofuel Commitment - Still Backing Ethanol & Cellulosic Biofuels
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A Finnish designer has made a working surfboard from broken skateboards. Read the original here: Hollow Surfboard Is Made from Broken Skateboards
How to grow tastier tomatoes and how to make food taste sweeter without sugar: just two amazing discoveries from a study of the chemical interactions underlying tomato flavor preferences Read the rest here: The Secrets of Tasty Tomatoes Discovered - Can ...
