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Smokey got it wrong

From the National Post: Smokey got it wrong. Splashed with drops of burning fuel gel, trailing from a helicopter concealed by a roiling column of smoke overhead, the giant pines of Mount Nestor fire up...

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To Greece, by car, on grease

From the Guardian: To Greece, by car, on grease. A group of British eco-enthusiasts have just pulled off the greenest and grubbiest car rally ever, driving from London to Athens in vehicles powered...

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Seawater greenhouses to bring life to the desert

From The Guardian: Seawater greenhouses to bring life to the desert. Vast greenhouses that use seawater to grow crops could be combined with solar power plants to provide food, fresh water and clean...

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The walking house

This has to be the strangest form of housing I’ve seen in a while. From the 24 Hour Museum: Danish artists create life-size walking house for Wysing Arts Centre near Cambridge. With oil prices...

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100 goats turned loose on a downtown L.A. plot

From the LA Times: 100 goats turned loose on a downtown L.A. plot. The hills were alive with the sound of munching. In fact, the only things that seemed missing Monday when a herd of goats climbed up a...

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Earthworms to aid soil clean-up

From the BBC: Earthworms to aid soil clean-up. Scientists have discovered how metal-munching earthworms can help plants to clean up contaminated soils. Researchers at Reading University found that...

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Are towns really safer without traffic lights?

From csmonitor.com: Are towns really safer without traffic lights?. BOHMTE, GERMANY — When Ulrike Rubcic heard that her town would take down all of its traffic lights, she rolled her eyes in disbelief....

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Samsø, the Danish island living off-grid

From The Guardian: Isle of plenty. Jorgen Tranberg looks a farmer to his roots: grubby blue overalls, crumpled T-shirt and crinkled, weather-beaten features. His laconic manner, blond hair and black...

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Montreal rolls out bike-sharing plan

From the Globe and Mail: Montreal rolls out bike-sharing plan. Paris has Vélib, Barcelona has Bicing, and as of today, Montreal will start to showcase its own European-style bike-sharing program with a...

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5 incredible container houses

Well, what do you think? Would you want to live in any of these container houses?

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Up, up and away

From the New York Times: Up, Up and Away. Shara and Scott Di Valerio wanted to build a deck for their hot tub, a place to relax in the woods on their five acres east of Seattle. But at some point, as...

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Tree fungus could provide green transport fuel

From The Guardian: Tree fungus could provide green transport fuel. A tree fungus could provide green fuel that can be pumped directly into tanks, scientists say. The organism, found in the Patagonian...

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The woman with a tiny carbon footprint

From The Guardian: The woman with a tiny carbon footprint. We all know we are meant to be reducing our carbon footprint, but I suspect that many people wouldn’t be prepared to go as far as Joan Pick....

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Ancient skills ‘could reverse global warming’

From The Independent: Ancient skills ‘could reverse global warming’. Ancient techniques pioneered by pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians are about to be pressed into service in Britain and Central America...

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Waste coffee grounds offer new source of biodiesel fuel

From EurekAlert: Waste coffee grounds offer new source of biodiesel fuel. Researchers in Nevada are reporting that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly...

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Darfur refugees tap the sun’s power to cook

From csmonitor.com: Darfur refugees tap the sun’s power to cook. Imagine a town where everyone used solar power to cook their food, and reduced their reliance on finite sources of fuel, like firewood....

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Town that banned bags touts golf carts

From the Times Colonist: Town that banned bags touts golf carts. The tiny town in northern Manitoba that was first in Canada to ban plastic shopping bags is now turning its attention to gas-powered...

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Your petrol tank could soon smell like a distillery

From the Scotsman: Cheers! Your petrol tank could soon be smelling like a distillery. Scotland’s whisky industry could become the source of eco-friendly biofuels for cars, with motorists powering their...

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A house built for £4,000

From the Independent: How I built my house for £4,000. When he’s expecting visitors, Steve James watches out the windows so he can catch the look on their faces when they see his house for the first...

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A lush, no-care lawn

From the New York Times: Moss Makes a Lush, No-Care Lawn. David Benner hasn’t watered his lawn since the Kennedy administration. He hasn’t mowed it, either. And it’s doing just fine. On a late-April...

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Planned: hi-tech, but traditional style community

From the Guardian: Free bikes, no uPVC – green light for prince’s ecotown. The first homes will come with a free bicycle, and giant wind turbines will power mandatory low-energy light bulbs. Welcome to...

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Eat insects to help the environment

From Discover Magazine: Want to Help the Environment? Eat Insects. David Gracer lifts a giant water bug, places his thumbs in a pre-sliced slit in its underside, and flips off its head. "Smell the...

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Trouble in truffledom

From the Beeb: Alien threat to truffle delicacy. One of the world’s most prized culinary delicacies, the famous Perigord black truffle, could soon be off the menu. Scientists fear it will be wiped out...

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Sweden turning sewage into a gasoline substitute

From the International Herald Tribune: Sweden turning sewage into a gasoline substitute. GOTEBORG, Sweden: Taking a road trip? Remember to visit the toilet first. This city is among dozens of...

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Keyhole gardens lock out starvation in Lesotho

From Celesias: Keyhole Gardens Lock Out Starvation in Lesotho. Sometimes, the best solutions are low-tech. For example, in the tiny African country of Lesotho, a simple organic gardening technique...

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The old ladies and the rats

What if you’d bought a house in a good neighbourhood, moved in, and then realized that you had a major rat problem caused by the old ladies next door? The LA Weekly tells of Scott and Liz Denham, who...

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Fort Nelson First Nation uses fire to save bison, limit wildfires

Fighting fire with fire! And also saving bison. From the CBC: Fort Nelson First Nation uses fire to save bison, limit wildfires. Using a helicopter and a machine that pumps out 100 flaming ping-pong...

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New study captures stunning diversity of ocean microbes

From csmonitor.com: New study captures stunning diversity of ocean microbes. The sunlit upper layer of the world’s oceans is teeming with tiny creatures that seem to have jumped off the pages of a Dr....

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It’s illegal to throw out good food in France

It’s not often that news of a new law cheers me, but this one’s great. From Mother Jones: This Is the Unprecedented New Law France Just Passed to Eliminate Supermarket Waste. On Thursday, France’s...

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Starved for fire, Wisconsin’s pine barrens disappear

When humans rush to extinguish every wildfire, wildfires are not the only thing extinguished. From Science Daily: Starved for fire, Wisconsin’s pine barrens disappear. A century spent treating...

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Genetically altering ecosystems to save them from climate change

From Nautilus: This Man Is Genetically Altering Ecosystems to Save Them from Climate Change. On a chilly afternoon last October, at a University of Northern Arizona conference, Thomas Whitham, a plant...

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The wood wide web

From The Atlantic: The wood wide web. In 1999, a team of scientists led by Christian Körner did what thousands of people do every Christmas: they wrapped Norway spruce trees in tubes. Except this was...

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Water meadows

Caught by the River has a lovely post on water meadows. In his excellent book The History of the Countryside, Oliver Rackham describes four ways in which we lose our landscape: the loss of beauty, of...

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Ethiopian farmers made a desert bloom again

From Grist: Ethiopian farmers made a desert bloom again. In the steep fields of Ethiopia’s highlands, when rain falls on the parched, overworked land it runs downhill, carrying soil with it. Farmers...

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A cull to save the kelp

Ah, kelp. It’s an amazing seaweed, which is supposed to grow in profusion all over the place. (Well, I don’t know about your part of the world, but certainly in mine.) In recent years people who care...

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Woolly mammoth on verge of resurrection

Woolly mammoth on verge of resurrection, scientists reveal. And they are apparently quite serious about this. (!) From the Guardian: The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now...

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What about those invasive crayfish?

What if the creatures in the lake near you aren’t really supposed to be there? From Hakai Magazine, this is Amorina Kingdon’s article on invasive crayfish in Washington state: Pinch Me. In Pine Lake,...

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Re-tracing the Fram’s 1893 polar voyage

Now here’s a research trip I’d love to join: a re-tracing of the Fram’s 1893 voyage. Wow. It’s going to happen in 2019, so there’s plenty of time for the organizers to send me an invitation. Do you...

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How wolves change rivers

This is stunning, and something we should all see. (Henry’s comment on the woolly mammoth post the other day reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post this video for, um, ages.)

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Chemists cook up way to remove microplastics using okra

From phys.org: Chemists cook up way to remove microplastics using okra. Extracts of okra and other slimy plants commonly used in cooking can help remove dangerous microplastics from wastewater,...

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