Alternative Energies
Sorry! Winter Storm Jonas doesn’t make climate change a liberal hoax

Good news, folks! It turns out that climate change is a big ol’ liberal hoax after all. Need proof? Just look out your window: If you’re anywhere east of Tupelo, you’re probably seeing a bunch of white stuff falling from the sky, compliments of Winter Storm Jonas. We call that “snow,” and it proves once and for all that “global warming” is a conspiracy dreamed up by known communist Al Gore to bring down the world economy. Guess we can just pack up our desks and go home. At least, that’s what America’s climate deniers would have you believe. This logic seems to rear its ignorant head every time there’s a major snow storm, such as last year when…

My city banned plastic bags — now where am I supposed to recycle them?

Q. Dear Umbra, Olympia recently banned plastic bags, which is great. Here is my problem: Now that stores are not using plastic bags, they have removed all the plastic bag recycle bins. I looked up places to recycle plastic bags in my area, and Lowe’s was listed. I took the bags I had been saving for six months to Lowe’s and they informed me that they would take the bags, but they are not recycled. The plastic bags just are thrown in their garbage. So I am back at the beginning again, trying to find somewhere to recycle the plastic bags that I have saved. Can you help me find somewhere that I could send these formerly recyclable plastic bags? Brooke W. Olympia, Wash. A…

Dutch children learn about life and death through lion dissection

Until today, the most peculiar thing I’d heard about Denmark was that parents leave their children to sleep outside in subzero temperatures — something that would get you arrested in the United States, if not put on a government watch list. But there’s something else Denmark does very differently when it comes to child-rearing: public dissections. N0 — not dissecting the children! Come on! Two years ago, a zoo in Copenhagen decided to kill a healthy young giraffe that was deemed unfit for breeding. Afterward, the zoo held a dissection, invited the public to watch the process, and then fed Marius the giraffe to some nearby lions. The world hates little more than an animal meeting its untimely death, and an outpouring of outrage…

New approaches for hybrid solar cells

Using a new procedure researchers can now produce extremely thin and robust, yet highly porous semiconductor layers. A very promising material — for small, lightweight, flexible solar cells, for example, or electrodes improving the performance of rechargeable batteries.

A new green power source

To limit climate change, experts say that we need to reach carbon neutrality by the end of this century at the latest. To achieve that goal, our dependence on fossil fuels must be reversed. But what energy source will take its place? Researchers report that they just might have the answer: blue-green algae.

Modern-day slavery and environmental devastation go hand in hand

Slavery didn’t end with the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite slavery being illegal in every country on the planet, there are more enslaved people alive today than at any point in history. From fishing boats in Thailand to private homes in New York to diamond mines in Congo to rock quarries in India, there are an estimated 30 million people working in bondage right now. That’s right — 30 million. Modern slavery is the subject of Blood and Earth, a new book by Kevin Bales, who cofounded Free the Slaves, an organization working to end slavery around the world. Bales spoke with Fresh Air’s Dave Davies, and he said that the devastation bondage causes isn’t limited to the lives of enslaved people themselves; it also has a…