The image above — produced by the 
The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Facility in Nevada is the first utility-scale concentrating solar plant that can provide electricity whenever it’s needed most, even after dark.
Credit: SolarReserve
Deep in the Nevada desert, halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, a lone white tower stands 195 meters tall, gleaming like a beacon. It is surrounded by more than 10,000 billboard-size mirrors focusing the sun’s rays on its tip. The Crescent Dunes “concentrating solar power” plant looks like some advanced communication device for aliens. But the facility’s innovation lies in the fact that it can store electricity and make it available on demand any time—day or night.
Crescent Dunes, the flagship project of Santa Monica–based firm SolarReserve, has achieved what engineers and proponents of renewable energy have struggled with for decades: providing cheap, commercial-scale, non–fossil fuel electricity even when winds are calm or […]
On Friday, July 1, 2016, Vermont became the first U.S. state to require the labeling of foods made with genetically modified ingredients.
Credit: AP /Lisa Rathke
On Wednesday, a scene that passed for exciting—at least by Capitol Hill standards—unfolded when demonstrators in the Senate gallery showered $2,000 upon lawmakers in the chamber below.
Rather than a taxpayer-initiated raise, the stunt was in protest of a federal bill that would force food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) according to terms that some say are too accommodating of big food companies and farm-industry groups. Despite the interjection of the “Monsanto money,” the bill passed in the Senate late on Thursday evening. The bill, which still needs the […]
Glacier National Park
The Republican platform committee met this week to draft the document that defines the party’s official principles and policies. Along with provisions on pornography and LGBT “conversion therapy” is an amendment calling for the indiscriminate and immediate disposal of national public lands.
The inclusion of this provision in the Republican Party’s platform reflects the growing influence of and ideological alliance between several anti-park members of the GOP and anti-government extremists, led by Cliven Bundy, who dispute the federal government’s authority over national public lands.
“Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to the states,” reads the adopted language. “We call upon all national and state leaders and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence to urge the transfer of those lands identified.”
The provision calls for an immediate full-scale disposal of “certain” public lands, without defining which lands it would apply to, leaving national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and national […]
