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San Francisco, 3:36 AM
Thu Dec 31
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The Splendor of Greenland's Ice Sheet Crumbling Away
For the past several years, scientists have been tracking the transformation of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Now it's shrinking faster than ever, and a new study proves it has lost 1500 gigatons of mass from 2000 to 2008. More »The Future of Vancouver Takes Shape
In the misty distance is the gleaming sphere of Science World, and in the foreground is Vancouver's ultra-green Olympic Village, which planners say will hold 16,000 people by 2020. They'll eat food grown on roofs and drink reclaimed rainwater. More »10 Ways To Rescue The Climate, According To Science Fiction
Hot enough for ya? Our crazy fossil-fuel orgy is driving the planet's temperatures through the roof. Good thing science fiction books and movies have come up with 10 can't-fail solutions (well, maybe they'd work) for stopping global warming. More »Let's Start the Offshore Logging Lobby with Robots
Lumber companies are calling for offshore clear-cutting, logging forests that have been underwater for decades. And environmentalists have discovered the only loggers they could love. More »Massive Flood of Toxic Ash Swallows Tennessee Area, Heads to Mississippi River
Photon Farming in the Vast Solar Fields of Northern China
This is an aerial view of China's future — vast solar farms that developers hope will fuel the industrial nation, as well as cut down on its choking smog problem. This solar photovoltaic power station, the largest of its type in northwest China, is currently under construction in Xining of Qinghai Province. More »Get Those Electrons Into A Seminar, Stat!
A Fleet of 1500 Cloud-Seeding Ships Could Stop Global Warming, Say Scientists
Scifi's Greatest Space Builders — And How We'll Copy Them
One day, when you hear someone is a construction worker, you'll have to ask whether he or she wears a spacesuit on the job. We're already assembling massive structures in space — like the International Space Station and Dextre, the "monster" robot that got built in space this past spring — but space construction will soon become more and more common. So it's a good thing science fiction is full of awesome examples of space construction, from Asimov to Star Trek. More »Earth Systems Science Agency — To the Rescue!
Eco Nightclub Powered by Boogie Energy
The Public Transit Projects that Should Have Been
Urban history is littered with the dead bodies of scrapped public transit projects. When eager commuters and car companies turned the automobile into the most popular form of transit in the world in the twentieth century, many cities set aside plans for expanding their public transit systems, such as the electric tram system planned for regions feeding into Melbourne, Australia. In some cases, city planners actually ripped out existing transit systems like Los Angeles' once-enormous cable car network. What would these cities and others look like if their public transit systems had continued to thrive and we lived in a world without cars? We've got five alternate urban histories of public transport for you below. More »A Solar-Powered Death Ray
Power Your Home with Helium Balloons
Need to get some quick-and-pretty solar energy to your house, but don't want to mount a bunch of heavy solar panels on your roof? Now you can start powering up with these gorgeous, lightweight solar balloons. As long as you've got a helium tank handy, says inventor Joseph Cory, just one or two of these balloons made with photovoltaic solar cells could power your whole house. More »Time Travel for Eco-Tourists
If you could time travel back 400 years to see the thick, green forests and clear streams of pre-urban New York City, would it change the way you feel about the environment today? Ecologist Eric Sanderson thinks so. In preparation for the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in New York's harbor, he's been putting together a series of computer-generated images of New York as it was four centuries ago, based on old maps and extrapolations from ecological data. He calls it Project Manhatta, and you can see an image from it above, showing Times Square 400 years ago and today. Why would an ecologist want to time travel rather than recycle? More »Giant Machines That Eat Garbage (and the People Who Feed Them)
Garbage disposal factories are the unsung heroes of the giant machine world. With everybody excited about Pixar's upcoming garbage robot flick Wall-E, it's time to meet some real-life garbage machines. Some are glistening high tech towers, like this waste disposal/power plant in Vienna. Others are surprisingly low-tech. Check out our gallery of fantastic and grossomatic waste disposal factories — and the workers who tend them — from around the world. More »A Water Bottle for Giant Monsters Showed Up Yesterday in Sao Paulo
No, it's not really a wine cooler for Cloverfield. It's an art installation by Eduardo Srur on the banks of Sao Paulo's most polluted river, which was also the recent site of a toxic fashion show. Srur doesn't want to make the Tiete river chic, though — he wants to warn people of the dangers of pollution from non-biodegradable stuff like plastic bottles. We've got more images of this cool mega-art below. More »Giant Tree-Powered Machine Supplies Energy, Air to Madrid
This industrial environmentalist building/machine in Madrid is packed with solar cells and trees, and will apparently generate enough energy to sell to local electric companies. Called an "Air Tree," and created by Urban Ecosystems, the mega-device is supposed to have a significantly beneficial impact on the climate. Plus it just looks seriously badass, as you can see in these wide-angle views. More »