geoengineering
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Instead of hacking the planet, should we hack our babies?
S. Matthew Liao, a philosopher and bioethicist, has some incredible ideas about how to deal with climate change. Instead of resorting to geoengineering, he suggests, why not consider engineering humans to cause less damage to the planet? Ross Andersen interviewed Liao, and one of the most fascinating ideas that they discussed is the possibility of […]
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Critical List: China’s emissions outstrip America’s; Bill Gates hearts geoengineering
By 2015, China will emit 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the United States does. The Texas drought has forced some towns to ship in their water by truck. Bill Gates is underwriting geoengineering lobbying efforts.
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Critical List: Sumatran elephants critically endangered; Al Gore goes on a cruise
Sumatran elephants are critically endangered. Watch out for the solar flare that’s supposed to hit Earth today! It’s the strongest since 2005. President Obama might pump increased domestic oil and gas production in his State of the Union.
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Don’t believe the hype about the ‘molecule that could solve climate change’
Some chemists came up with a really clever way to observe the intermediate stage of an atmospheric chemical reaction, and then some PR flack got a hold of it and suddenly science has invented a brand-new molecule that will solve all our climate change woes! As usual, things that seem too good to be true probably are.
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Sucking carbon out of the air: Probably not an option
With all this talk of the impossibility of averting catastrophic levels of future climate change, it's tempting to daydream of using technology to clean up the bed we just shat. Economists, especially, love this kind of thinking — if we just hoard enough precious gold today, maybe we can transmute it into a livable planet […]
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Critical List: Brazil notices oil drilling has consequences; bikes made out of wood
Brazil discovers that oil drilling is not good for the environment. Also, Congress is kicking renewable energy to the curb the way a mean person would a really cute puppy. Like these. Oh, wait, don't buy those, they came from puppy mills. People collectively put their fingers in their ears and go LA LA LA […]
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Mongolia plans to combat warming with giant ice cube
Scientists in Ulan Bator, Mongolia are planning to save energy in summer by cryogenically preserving winter. They want to encourage extremely thick ice to form on the local river, thus storing up cold temperatures that can later be used to cool the city. The scientists are artificially creating "naleds," which are slabs of ice up […]
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Scientists are about to test a scheme to cool the Earth
If the world is getting hotter because it's absorbing too much sunlight, why not put up a sunshade? That's the question Montgomery Burns has often asked, and one that scientists in the UK will begin to answer this October when they will use a weather balloon to loft a hose a little more than half a mile into the sky. They'll then pump water up the hose into the atmosphere. If that sounds simplistic to you, maybe you just don’t understand science.
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Conservative pundits grapple with 'anti-science' charge, flail
Conservatives are trying to defend their movement against the charge that Republicans are "anti-science." They started off badly and are getting worse.
