By now, you've no doubt heard of the tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma, causing extensive damage. The number of fatalities remains unknown. I have seen reports of as many 91 and as low as 24. The number of injured is in the hundreds. Many remain missing.Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic put together a fantastic backgrounder with answers to some of the most common questions following a storm like this.According to people on Twitter, a meteorologist for the local news station KFOR called the tornado ...

Having easy access to light and power is something we in the developed world take for granted, but for many people across the globe, it's not easy or cheap, and often unavailable all together. An estimated 1.5 billion people on our planet are living off of the grid, illuminating their lives with dirty (and expensive) kerosene lanterns and having to constantly search for a place to charge their mobile phones.A solar-powered solution that can provide not only bright and efficient lighting, but als...

By Richard Caperton, Guest Blogger and Adam James, Guest Blogger on May 21, 2013 at 11:06 am The Production Tax Credit — the key federal incentive for wind power — is a success story. Since the PTC was first enacted in 1992, the cost of wind power has fallen 90 percent, 75,000 people now work in the wind industry, and wind power is booming. Yet, some people still think the PTC should be eliminated. Most interestingly, Exelon — the large Midwestern utility and power plant operator — has made e...

DeSmogBlog notes that the Bureau of Land Managemen’s recently-released rules governing fracking on federal lands ”will adopt the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil for fracking chemical fluid disclosure on U.S. public.” It uses a voluntary online chemical disclosure database that has “truck-sized” loopholes, most notably that it’s voluntary — editors. By Frances Beinecke via NRDC When I talk to people who live near fracking operations, they often ask me...

From anti-front yard veggie garden ordinances to illegal "guerrilla grafted" fruit trees, what can and can't be grown and where has long been a source of controversy among TreeHuggers.In Nelson, Ontario, a row recently kicked off over some tobacco plants being grown in an office window, but which health authorities ordered removed under the argument they were "promoting tobacco and smoking to children."According to The Province, Michael Chesney, owner and publisher of the Comment Canada magazine...

Whenever I hit the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) I run to the rear of the hall to find the Designboom Mart and the student work, which is always among the most interesting (and crowded) parts of the show. Not this year; I got to the back and they were nowhere to be found. Instead they were off in a big Butler barn of a building in North Javits. While there was a lot of room, it was quiet and missed the vibe of past years. The Designboom Mart had a very clever and cheap lig...

Our thoughts this morning are with those affected by the tornadoes in Oklahoma. Tomorrow, the House of Representatives should pass a bill aiming to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, but some House Democrats are trying to offer amendments to clarify the true nature of the project. [The Hill] The House is expected to easily pass a Keystone XL pipeline approval bill this week with bipartisan support, but liberal Democrats that oppose the project will try to land some punches too. Rep. Rus...

It's the hundredth anniversary of the greatest flower show in the world: the Chelsea Flower Show in London. It's a grand celebration, with gardeners pulling out all the stops in honour of the centenary. And that has been hard to do because the weather has been cold and grey in the lead up to the event. Garden gnomes were permitted for the first time ever, but no one seemed to bother using them. There was lots of woodland style planting this year, and quite a few environmentally oriented garde...

Of all the ways to heat metal to melting points in order to work with it, using the sun's heat is not usually listed among them. But Green Power Science does just that with this DIY solar foundry. Metal-working, in the backyard, without an open flame. Crazy!© Green Power Science via InstructablesBut also still fairly dangerous. Just read the description on the project: "The solar tracker keeps our target illuminated for 8 hours a day enabling build temperatures exceeding 2100˚ Celsius, a new per...

Rep. Lamar Smith, the new chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, wrote an op-ed in today’s Washington Post that contains several misrepresentations of fact. He argued for increased fossil fuel production, against the scientific consensus that humans cause climate change, and for a “wait-and-see” approach to cutting carbon emissions. Below is a fact check on the seven worst parts. It is worth noting that just two years ago, the Washington Post’s Editorial Page Editor wrote “The GOPs...

TreeHugger visits New York during Design Week, catching the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), Wanted Design, and other exhibits and activities.Swedish design company Wästberg has a history of creating designs that incorporate unusual bio-based materials. At the 2011 International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), they showed a paper desk lamp created from wood pulp and bio-based plastic, made from corn or sugarcane.At this year's ICFF, Wästberg's Dirk Winkel has presented a lam...

TreeHugger visits New York during Design Week, catching the International Contemporary Furniture Fair,(ICFF) Wanted Design, and other exhibits and activities.Milk crates used to be the staple of university dorm rooms, and hundreds of thousands are stolen each year. Now they are manufactured and sold for storage, or in the case of Combo Colab's XTOOL, they are manufactured from 95% recycled plastic and become "a durable, versatile and playful stool that can be used indoors and out. They say it i...

The votes are in! ARKive is a project of Wildscreen, a non-profit working globally to promote an appreciation of biodiversity and nature through the power of wildlife imagery.ARKive's goal is to be a publicly accessible centralized repository that helps raise awareness and educate the public:Valuable wildlife photographs and videos have been scattered throughout the world in a wide variety of private, commercial and specialist collections, with no centralised collection, restricted public access...

This one will go into the "no comments" and "speaks for itself" category.Twitter/Screen captureTwitter/Screen captureIf you want more details, you can read the whole (still ongoing) saga here. Thanks to Grist for bringing it to our attention. Original linkOriginal author: Michael Graham Richard

At the end of March, the EPA issued a proposed new vehicle emission and fuel standards program, known as the Tier 3, to reduce air pollution from passenger cars and trucks. Starting in 2017, Tier 3 would set new vehicle emission standards, lower the sulfur content of gasoline, reduce air pollution, create new jobs through new technology, and save lives. Sounds great, right?Unfortunately, if not surprisingly, Big Oil opposes the new standards, trotting out tired, misleading claims that the clean ...

For the last several years, deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon have been in steady decline, reaching its lowest point on record just last year. But despite this progress the latest figures show that we are not out of the woods yet -- in a literal sense of that phrase, however, we are a little closer.According to the Brazilian forest monitoring agency, IMAZON, which uses satellite imagery to track deforestation in near real-time, the world's largest rainforest lost of 606 square miles of...

(Credit: Robert F. Bukaty, AP) Fishing is a profession often passed down from one generation to the next. Many lobstermen in Maine fish the same bottom their fathers and grandfathers fished, and the same holds true of fishermen father offshore as well. Yet increasingly, anecdotal evidence has suggested that the old faithful fishing spots are no longer quite so reliable. In northern regions these shifts could lead to conflicts over fishing rights and access to traditional fishing grounds. In the ...

by Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, New York City’s flagship public television station, WNET, has dropped the richest man in New York, carbon pollution billionaire David Koch, from its board of trustees. Days before the monthly board meeting on May 16, Koch’s name was removed from the WNET website. Koch had been a board member since 2006. Koch has been funding WNET since 1986. The severance of Koch’s longstanding relationship with WNET — which...

TreeHugger visits New York during Design Week, catching the International Contemporary Furniture Fair,(ICFF) Wanted Design, and other exhibits and activities.Every time I cover ICFF, I ask people I know what they think is the Best of Show. It is often something that I have not even looked at closely, or that had much impact on me at all. I asked Dave Pinter of PSFK and he said "no question, the weaver, he is the real deal."I went back to look more closely and think he might be right. weaver at i...

What big teeth you have got! Ever wondered what it's like to be eaten by a grizzly bear? Probably not... Except maybe in a nightmare. In any case, it's now possible to see (if not feel) what it's like from the safety of your home.Brad Josephs was trying to get footage of Grizzly bears for the BBC’s Great Bear Stakeout (I've never seen it, so I'm not quite sure what it's like -- maybe some of our readers from the UK can let us know in the comments below?) when a Grizzly decided to have a closer l...