 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
A wolf leaves Yellowstone National Park. It follows the scent of elk, crosses an invisible boundary and enters Montana. Nothing in the landscape tells it that the rules have changed. Yet an animal protected and studied inside the park can now legally be shot or trapped. We call Yellowstone’s wolf restoration a conservation triumph. Why, then, do we permit the killing of the very animals we worked so hard to bring back?
With diesel prices up sharply and digital plants speeding up training, the Redmond, Wash., startup is taking on new crops and new customers for its solar-powered weeding robots.
The Trump administration is threatening to cut out the public and speed the construction of AI data centers and their polluting power plants. The administration’s response to growing opposition to AI data centers has been to limit the public’s right to be heard, and to weaken environmental regulations. Last year, the administration vowed to repeal or weaken any regulations that hinder AI deployment and to promote the rapid buildout of data centers across the United States. The assault on the Clean Air Act on behalf of AI data centers escalated in recent months, including four actions that would severely undermine key pollution protections, exclude the public, and speed the construction of data centers and the power plants that supply their electricity.
15 October 2026 - CAPE COD, MA - As Massachusetts Cranberry Month rolls out, the economic impact of the tiny red berry continues on Cape Cod, where the whole industry began. What are cranberry bogs like in the fall? Cape Cod fall means the reds and golds … of a cranberry bog. As the days cool, the iconic native berry ripens and the world watches. “This is the glorious part, that is the most photogenic “ said Dave Ross owner/operator of Cape Cod Cranberry Realty Trust – based in West Barnstable and grower of cranberries in multiple bogs across Cape Cod. What is the economic impact of cranberries on Cape Cod?
Most smartphone traffic already runs over WiFi, and Musk is planning a terrestrial network. Telcos may keep carrying the traffic while losing the customer. During SpaceX’s Q3 2026 earnings call, Elon Musk made a comment that should concern mobile operators. “We will also have direct-to-cell, high-bandwidth direct-to-cell capability, and we will be building out our terrestrial network.” He was not describing Starlink as a satellite-only mobile service. He was describing a future network that combines space and ground infrastructure, with broad connectivity anywhere SpaceX is allowed to operate.
The root cause of Elon Musk’s ascent to de facto defense secretary is the federal government’s practice of contracting out the work it had formerly done itself. This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the decision to block Ukraine from the high-speed Starlink satellite alerts that enabled it to intercept Russian missiles and drones was made by SpaceX owner Elon Musk, either in conjunction with President Trump or in advance of Trump’s support for the action. Whichever version is more correct, Musk is either making or carrying out a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign and military policy—something that no private citizen has ever done in our 250-year history. Winchester made rifles, but it didn’t order the army to use them against native tribes. Boeing made the B-29s, but it didn’t order them to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once the army purchased the Winchesters, and the Air Force, the B-29s, their manufacturers weren’t at the table or in the room where government leaders decided where, when, how—and in the case of Ukraine and Russia, why—they would or wouldn’t be deployed. They weren’t part of the kind of fundamental reorientation of foreign policy that Trump has wrought, in which his narcissistic and thuggish impulses have eclipsed the democratic affinities by which the U.S., at its all too intermittent best, has dealt with other nations. This month, that has meant Musk has played a key role in attempting to turn the tide in Russia’s favor in its war on Ukraine. This reductio ad absurdum of contracting out is also the result, of course, of the mind-meld between Trump and Musk, who, as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie pointed out last week, is every bit as racist, xenophobic, and self-interested as our president.
Once again, Consumer Reports finds that the top Internet service providers are independently-owned, locally-owned, or publicly-owned ISPs. The magazine’s 2026 survey of its 105,000 members found that “a handful of [I]nternet service providers (ISPs) received stellar ratings and earned CR’s Recommended badge. But that was the exception, especially when it comes to value.” Of the 68 companies ranked, most "received middling or worse marks" with the "low scorers includ(ing) some of the country’s biggest ISPs, such as Cox, Optimum (Altice), Spectrum (Charter), and Xfinity (Comcast).” Consumer Reports finds that the top Internet service providers are independently-owned, locally-owned, or publicly-owned ISPs. Among the top 10 rated ISPs were Firefly Fiber Broadband, a subsidiary of the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative offering fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service to roughly 48,000 rural households in its region.
U.S. corporate journalism is actively, enthusiastically invested in lying to you.
That's the only conclusion you can draw after the U.S. press spent the last week helping white supremacist huckster Elon Musk sell the public on the idea of a flying car that simply doesn't exist.
Musk Corp recently "demonstrated" what it claimed was a flight-capable Tesla Roadster at a SpaceX stage in McGregor, Texas. The demonstration featured a "car" accelerating vertically up a Hot Wheels-esque ramp before using thrusters to flip over and descend to the ground. To be clear there is no actual flying car. There is absolutely no evidence that Tesla has solved any of the engineering, physics, regulatory, safety, or design hurdles of strapping rockets to the back of extremely heavy electric vehicles. We are simply repeating history (see: The Lady and The Dale documentary).
Freeze frame photos show what appears to be a lightweight hollowed out car shell prop, likely using magnets, suction, and compressed gas to help the country's richest nazi once again lie to the gullible American public and boost the valuation of a car company that stopped being innovative more than a decade ago.
A recent study has found an unexpected benefit from the undisputed king of the renewable energy sector as solar panels are creating rain clouds in the desert. What the researchers actually did This is not a thing anyone has watched happen, and that matters. In 2018, Yan Li, Eugenia Kalnay and colleagues published a study in the journal Science using a climate model with living, growing vegetation built into it. They filled more than 9 million square kilometers of the Sahara with imaginary wind and solar farms. The solar half alone would have generated about 79 terawatts of power. So the simulated farm produces roughly four times everything humanity uses, which tells you the scale we are talking about. Then they let the model run, and the desert started raining.
The plan would connect smartphones directly to satellites under European governance. Four of Europe’s biggest mobile operators have joined forces to explore launching satellite-to-mobile services that could challenge Elon Musk's Starlink, as the EU pushes for greater technological independence from US firms. Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone said on Monday they had signed a letter of intent to explore a joint bid for satellite spectrum that would enable compatible smartphones to connect directly to satellites without relying on traditional mobile towers. Under the plan, the four companies would establish the ground infrastructure needed to support satellite-to-mobile services while partnering with a satellite operator to provide connectivity from space, without investing directly in a satellite constellation. The satellite partner has yet to be selected.
Nearly half the world's reef-building coral species are at risk of extinction according to a global assessment released Thursday. Researchers warn that the accelerating climate crisis is making the danger even worse than the most recent data shows.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa is facing a budget deficit, high costs and economic strain from trade disputes that have squeezed farmers. But problems that have simmered for decades — water quality and cancer rates — have been forced to the forefront of state politics this year. They are the focus of debate questions, roundtable events and campaign advertisements for candidates from both parties, up and down the ballot. The issue has historically been politically taboo to avoid pointing fingers at the powerful agricultural industry in Iowa, one of the country’s top producers of corn, soybeans and hogs. Chemical fertilizers and animal waste contain nitrates and phosphorus that can get washed with rain or snowmelt into the state’s web of rivers.
|
The destructive 1982-83 El Niño, then the strongest on record, eroded cliffs, leaving homes hanging precariously over the edges. A coastal scientist explains the escalating risks. Along the central coast, waves and high-tide flooding eroded bluffs. In Pacifica, just outside San Francisco, the edge of a sandy cliff lost over 65 feet as it failed, collapsing onto the beach and forcing the relocation of a two-story building and removal of an entire row of mobile homes. This area of high but weak bluffs continued to erode over the subsequent decades, forcing the demolition of bluff-top homes and apartments. The El Niño now building in 2026-27 is forecast to be even stronger, and coastal homes are already seeing damage. I have studied coastal geology and oceanography in California for nearly six decades. With the conditions expected this year, coastal flooding, coastal erosion and landslides are likely, and more dramatic cliff collapses wouldn’t be a surprise, though every El Niño is different.
Within sight of a southeast Texas middle school stands a chemical plant that President Trump excused from new federal rules intended to curb its cancer-causing pollution. About a 30-minute drive from Pittsburgh, a steel-making facility has spewed carcinogenic chemicals near homes for years. Mr. Trump gave it a similar waiver from recent clean-air rules. And on the outskirts of Richmond, Va., the owners of an industrial warehouse emailed the Trump administration asking for their own waiver. Their wish was granted. Nine months later, the facility accidentally released a large plume of carcinogenic gas into the community. In total, since taking office again, Mr. Trump exempted 202 facilities in 39 states and Puerto Rico from clean-air regulations that were going into effect.
The global transition to renewable energy often presents a stark environmental paradox: to save the planet with clean power, we must sometimes clear the very ecosystems that sustain it. Conventional ground-mounted solar farms can require extensive land clearing, a practice that can eliminate up to 98 percent of tree biomass. In response, South Korea is pioneering a visionary approach that harmonizes energy production with ecological preservation through the development of photovoltaic “solar trees.” Elevated PV Arrays Inside Living Forests Instead of razing forests, South Korean innovators are integrating solar technology directly into them.
Senior executives have resigned from a $25 billion US liquefied natural gas venture after its former chief executive alleged that Russian energy group Novatek was secretly financing the project and controlling its strategic direction without the necessary US authorization, according to a report by the Financial Times (FT).
Earlier in October, Finnish authorities ordered Google’s affiliate data center developer Tuike Finland Oy to immediately suspend the illegal cutting of some 1,300 acres of forest. The tech giant was given a week to draft a report explaining its actions, which soon became a flashpoint for Europe’s growing outrage over the data center boom. As the anger grew, reporters descended on the scene — and what they found is a clear-cut example of the AI revolution’s impact on the environment. Google's cut-first pay-later approach to Finland's boreal forests is leaving wild fauna without a place to call home. “We had wolves coming into the village because all the wild animals moved out of the forest,” 53-year-old Otanmäki resident Anni Ranta told the Guardian. “They fled.” “I don’t want them here,” she continued, speaking of Google’s data centers. “I don’t want them in Finland at all. I don’t like the whole idea of AI and the world changing and the way it’s changing. It’s going too fast, too soon.”
The Trump administration’s campaign to compel hundreds of billions of dollars of new military appropriations out of Congress has been stalled in the Senate for months. The Trump administration’s campaign to compel hundreds of billions of dollars of new military appropriations out of Congress, citing new materiel needs downstream of its unsanctioned Iran War, has been stalled in the Senate for months. But one unexpected winner has emerged from the congressional stalemate over defense spending: an obscure investment office in the Pentagon known as the Economic Defense Unit (EDU). Earlier this year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg stood up the EDU and appointed George Kollitides, a one-time executive at Feinberg’s former private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, who recently was the subject of a ProPublica investigation for his role in steering a $350 million Department of Defense contract to a consulting firm where he was a partner until just weeks ago. The office was created by way of a memo from the deputy secretary, and has been operating without congressional authorization for months, taking center stage in the administration’s multi-billion-dollar effort to prop up domestic military and energy supply chains. Those deals have been heavily scrutinized for the ways they’ve favored well-connected Wall Street firms and have been set up to benefit the president and his inner circle.
A federal court in New York definitively ruled that the Office of Personnel Management violated the law when it disclosed millions of federal employee records to DOGE agents. The court will decide the remedy at a later date.
As electricity demand surges, data centers proliferate, utilities seek major infrastructure investments, and households confront higher bills, our states and systems are woefully unprepared. Consumers are rightfully wondering who will pay for, benefit from, and make decisions about the evolving U.S. electricity system. States have multiple policy options to meet consumer demands for affordability, agency, and accountability — but they are leaving too many of those options on the table. Almost every state earned a failing grade on ILSR’s 2026 Community Power Scorecard, which grades all 50 states and D.C. on policies that give communities and individuals greater control over their energy sources and protect ratepayers from abuses of utility monopoly power.
Sales reveal how many cars people actually bought, but not how many they actually wanted. Prices, on the other hand, show how demand is changing. Within three months of the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026, the average price of gasoline for American drivers climbed from US$2.94 to $4.35 a gallon. If there was ever a moment for Americans to switch to electric vehicles, this was it. From March to May 2026, in fact, sales of hybrid electric vehicles were 18% higher than over the same months in 2025. But sales of fully electric vehicles were 16% lower from March to May 2026 compared with the same months in 2025. Some observers took that as evidence that high gas prices alone wouldn’t push Americans toward fully electric cars, but that conclusion misses half the story. I study car buyers and their preferences, and there is an important distinction between what consumers want and what they can actually buy. Sales reveal what cars people actually bought, but not necessarily what they actually wanted. When the supply of some kinds of cars can’t keep up with demand, prices rise, and that’s exactly what happened for electric vehicles in 2026.
The European Commission Decision In a world first, the European Commission will require cell phone radiation to be measured the way we actually use phones today, in a pocket, tucked into clothing, or held directly against the body. As detailed by Phonegate Alert, the European Commission adopted the decision to require 0 mm radiation testing for cell phones and other portable devices on as published in the Official Journal of the European Union on September 7, 2026. Companies will be able to use the older standard that allows 5 mm separation distance during a transition period ending March 7, 2028 “to allow manufacturers sufficient time” to adapt their equipment. RF radiation is a form of invisible, non-ionizing electromagnetic (EMF) radiation emitted by cell phones. It penetrates into our bodies. Governments set limits for how much RF radiation people may be exposed to. Before phones can be sold, they must therefore pass pre-market tests to ensure they do not exceed a country’s allowable RF exposure limits.
The Trump administration reduced the number of planned US weather satellites and removed key tools. Experts say it will set our weather forecasts back nearly a decade, especially for extreme weather events. This finding comes from a new report released Friday from the Government Accountability Office, and a letter sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday from Democratic lawmakers. The GAO report details ramifications from budget cuts made to the program for developing new geostationary weather satellites. These large satellites orbit the Earth at a fixed distance, centered over specific spots on the planet. They take the imagery of swirling clouds and storm systems that people see on the evening news or on their weather app each day. The data gathered by these satellites are crucial to issuing accurate weather forecasts.
In August of 2023, a series of wildfires broke out across Maui, killing more than 100 people, destroying thousands of homes, and causing billions in damage. Noelani Ahia, who is Kanaka Maoli and co-founder of Maui Medic Healers Hui, helped mobilize nearly 600 volunteers in Lāhainā, including doctors, nurses, and therapists. Three years later, the housing and health crises remain acute. Maui Medic Healers Hui runs a free clinic, but Ahia wishes it had 10 more to address the community’s needs. “The fire may be out, but the catastrophe is not over by any stretch of the imagination,” she said. Researchers are examining how fires affected a community already harmed by plantation agriculture, development, and colonialism.
|
