Article excerpt (from MSNBC):

“A crematorium is installing turbines in its burners that will convert waste heat from the combustion of each corpse into as much as 150 kilowatt-hours of juice — enough to power 1,500 televisions for an hour. The facility plans to sell the electricity to local power companies.

“Some might find this concept creepy. Others might be pleased to learn that the process ‘makes cremation much greener by utilizing its by-products,’ in the words of cremation engineer Steve Looker, owner and chief executive officer of the Florida-based company B&L Cremation Systems, which is unaffiliated with the Durham enterprise.”

Full article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45526347/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.T01vRHlENBl

[I find it very interesting that they quantify the heat produced by a burning body according to how many hours of television it generates, instead of something a bit more noble-sounding, such as how many trees it saves.]

This sounds too absurd to be real, but real it is.

Article from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/16/us-bioplastic-nanotechnology-idUSTRE81F1PO20120216

“Dutch scientists have found a way of turning plant matter into the building blocks of common plastics using a nanotechnology process that offers an alternative to oil-based production….The team from Utrecht University and Dow Chemical Co produced ethylene and propylene – precursors of materials found in everything from CDs to carrier bags and carpets – after developing a new kind of iron catalyst made of nanoparticles.”

From the Los Angeles Times:

Sacrificing the desert to save the Earth
By Julie Cart, February 5, 2012

“The public got its chance to comment at scores of open houses, but the real political horse trading took place in meetings involving solar developers, federal regulators and leaders of some of the nation’s top environmental organizations.

“Away from public scrutiny, they crafted a united front in favor of utility-scale solar development, often making difficult compromises.”
…
“Even if only a few of the proposed projects are built, hundreds of square miles of wild land will be scraped clear. Several thousand miles of power transmission corridors will be created.

“The desert will be scarred well beyond a human life span, and no amount of mitigation will repair it, according to scores of federal and state environmental reviews.

“‘The scale of impacts that we are facing, collectively across the desert, is phenomenal,’ said Dennis Schramm, former superintendent at neighboring Mojave National Preserve. ‘The reality of the Ivanpah project is that what it will look like on the ground is worse than any of the analyses predicted.’”

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-solar-desert-20120205,0,7889582.story

From an article in Forbes magazine:

But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.

Read the entire article, with links to both letters, here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkable-editorial-bias-on-climate-science-at-the-wall-street-journal/