global warming

Floating Apartment Complex Goes With the Flow of Rising Sea Levels

Here's a unique way to adapt to global warming: build floating apartment complexes. That's what Dutch designer Koen Olthuis is doing in the Netherlands with the Citadel, a residential complex that will be built on top of a ...READ»

IPCC: Monetary Benefits of Global Warming Prevention Outweigh Costs

Despite the flailing economy, many major companies--Wal-Mart, McDonald's, and Exxon, to name a few--have invested heavily in sustainable technologies that could mitigate the effects of global warming. Good news: these investments will ...READ»

Forget Global Warming; Could Wind Farms Affect the Weather?

Everyone (well, mostly everyone) is worried about the effects of climate change on global weather patterns. But what if wind power--one of the most prominent clean energy solutions--affects the weather too? According to scientists at ...READ»

How Can San Francisco Save Itself From Drowning? Six Pie-in-the-Sky Ideas

The Rising Tides Competition--which sought visionary ideas to deal with climate change--has just announced the winning proposals.READ»

Seven Stories This Week: Weird Science Edition

Yes, the King of Pop has gone to meet the Emperor of Pop, and taken much of his patented weirdness with him. Lest you forget that Earth is strange enough even without the scion of Neverland Ranch, here are a few of this week's viral ...READ»

Synthetic Tree Captures Carbon 1,000 Times Faster Than Real Trees

Sure, trees are nice to look at, but they're also carbon-collecting powerhouses. Now Klaus Lackner, a professor of geophysics at Columbia University, is developing a synthetic tree that can collect carbon approximately 1,000 times ...READ»

Fatboy Slim, Jarvis Cocker Go Blue in the Face to Battle Climate Change

Oxfam UK has teamed up with musicians including Fatboy Slim, Jarvis Cocker, Little Boots, and VW Brown for its "Blue in the Face" campaign to highlight the severity of climate change's potential impact on the world's ...READ»

F-Gases Are a Major Global Warming Threat. What Can We Do to Stop Them?

Greenpeace branded F-gases (refrigerant chemicals) as "the worst greenhouse gases you've never heard of" long ago, but a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has confirmed that the ...READ»

Dude, Where’s My Oil?

A Chinese company is trying to buy the Hummer brand from GM and the state-owned oil company is building massive storage tanks to stockpile gasoline and diesel fuel. It may make one chuckle - - they’ll need more gas to serve all those gas-guzzlers - - but there’s a more important message to take away from this news.READ»

Obama Climate Change Report: The Outlook Is Dire, the Time to Innovate Is Now

The Obama White House has released its first climate change report, and it doesn't say anything we don't already know. It says it, however, in stronger language than any presidency that came before, with statements like ...READ»

Europe's First Floating Apartment is First Step to Real Floating Cities?

Dutch architect Koen Olthuis has plans to build Europe's first floating apartment building in 2010. But it's just the first step towards whole floating cities, like the concepts we've shown before. Construction on The Citadel is ...READ»

The Bright Side of Global Warming: Dredging Opportunities

Most companies are cowering in fear at the thought of unpredictable global-warming-related weather events, but the dredging industry, at least, is set to benefit from rising seas. The Flemish newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen reports ...READ»

Carbon Credits Miss the Point

It may not be a popular thing to say, but all the feel-good talk about carbon emission policies may be obscuring a bigger and more important problem: Our society's long-entrenched habit of rampant over- consumption. When we focus ...READ»

Can Timberland Halve Its Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Next Year?

Can a major multinational brand halve its carbon emissions in only four years? We'll find out next year if Timberland manages to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half based on a 2006 baseline. The footwear company, which ...READ»

Now I Know How Al Gore Feels

I’ve been an environmental advocate for the same couple of decades, always suspecting that my friends raised an eyebrow or two over my predictions and admonitions about sustainability (my family, however, was not subtle about raising their eyebrows). I worked for the day when thinking “green” would be a normal part of everyday life. Well, just as Al Gore’s day(s) arrived in 2007, my days arrived this week.READ»

Forest Credits Could Crash The Price of Carbon, Greenpeace Says

Carbon cap-and-trade efforts are becoming one long chain of unintended consequences. To whit: Greenpeace released a report arguing that allowing official trade in carbon credits representing forest preservation would crash the price ...READ»

The Top 10 Global Warming Skeptics

What do Northern Ireland's environmental minister, the president of the Czech Republic, and Sarah Palin all have in common? They're climate crisis deniers, of course! In the spirit of the Heartland Institute's 2009 ...READ»

Can We Really Pull Carbon from the Air?

Geo-engineering—the idea that we can fix our carbon problem with a massively-scaled techno-intervention—might be amazing. But the projects—from seeding the ocean with iron to creating highly reflective artificial ...READ»

Can We Just Bury Our CO2 Problem in The Sand?

A research project is underway in Illinois to perform a large-scale test on a solution to carbon dioxide pollution: The gas is being pumped underground instead of being released into the atmosphere. Sounds crazy, or irresponsible? Not ...READ»

All’s Well That Ends A Well?

The California State Lands Commission recently voted to reject new offshore oil drilling even though the proposal had wide support, both from the “drill, baby, drill” crowd and enviros. There’s a sentence full of enigmas - - the ...READ»

Does President Obama Drink Tea?

Tea or coffee? It must be the former, because everyone I know is trying to read his tea leaves, especially when it comes to energy and environment policy. Crystal balls and beverage dregs may be reliable methods of forecasting some ...READ»

Clean coal: how to biologically convert CO2 into fuel profitably

Any carbon diet strategy would be dependent upon clean coal. Since carbon capture and storage is logistically unfeasible, I suggest promoting 4th generation fuel production: converting CO2 mined from coal-fired power plants into fuel profitably.READ»

A revolutionary new clean, cheap, abundant, and portable energy production technology

I would like to announce the arrival of a clean, cheap, abundant, and portable form of energy production that will make burning fossil fuel obsolete. I am very much aware of how crazy this sounds, but I have very good reasons for thinking that it is legitimate, although I am not a representative of the company.READ»

Do an Hour on the Lifecycle

I have a friend who swears by an exercise machine called the Lifecycle. He grinds and sweats an hour a day on that thing. Lots of other people do too, or so I’m told (I try to walk the dog three times a week and perform regular leg ...READ»

Water Desalination: The Answer to the World's Thirst?

As supplies of fresh water evaporate, the world turns to the sea.READ»

• GE's New Ecomagineer Spills It