Climate Technology

Turning your teeth green — in a good way [VIDEO]

Is this America's Greenest Dentist? He can't make getting your teeth cleaned more fun, but he can make it greener. Find out how he does it.

‘Passive House’ documentary is the last word on zero-energy buildings

Passive Houses are homes so well insulated that they require no heating at all, even in winter. They're super popular in Europe, because it’s a magical land where everything is made out of chocolate and any sexual encounter that ends in fewer than three orgasms is immediately reported to the happiness police.

Journalist Charlie Hoxie realized that most people in America have never heard of the Passive House (or Passivhaus in the original, economical German) building movement, so he embarked on a documentary to spread the word. What follows are a series of excerpts from that film.

Weird new all-electric cars debut at Detroit Auto Show

Volkswagen E-Bugster

Hitting the "on" button on this car (because in the future, all cars will be started the same way you start up a laptop) makes the interior flash blue like you've just stepped into a light cycle from TRON. Check the video, below, for the full effect.

This electrical socket spits out your power-sucking plugs

The PumPing Tap does not like wasted power. It's an electrical socket with a spring-loaded ejector seat, which pops plugs right out if they're slowly sucking energy when not in active use.

The idea is to combat vampire power, the massive amount of energy slowly sapped by idling gizmos, like microwaves that aren’t cooking or chargers that aren’t charging anything. The PumPing Tap (which is still in the design stage, sadly) monitors the flow of energy, and if you don't use a device for 10 minutes -- ptooie! -- it's unplugged.

Super scrubber turns CO2 into fuel

Boffins at the University of Southern California have created a plastic-based, sand-like solid that absorbs CO2 from the air at room temperature and releases it at 185 degrees F, reports […]

Trick out your Kindle with solar panels

Screwdriver-and-soldering-iron types have probably already made their e-readers solar powered, but what if you didn’t have any Schottky diodes lying around? SolarFocus has the technologically inept among us covered, with […]

The only defense of electric cars you really need

Maggie Koerth-Baker is one of the most responsible energy journalists on the planet, in part because she writes for the blog of all blogs, BoingBoing, which has never felt the need to cloak its writers' opinions in trumped-up objectivity and false balance. So it was refreshing to see her refute the latest turd lobbed over the wall by the internet's favorite tabloid, Gawker Media: "You Are Not Alone. America Hates Electric Cars.”

Embattled teen genius actually better, smarter than most people

Back in August, the Internet discovered Aidan Dwyer, a 13-year-old go-getter who worked out a way to make solar panels more efficient. Because nobody likes a 13-year-old go getter, the Internet basically told him NO YOU'RE WRONG.

Okay, so he should have measured power instead of voltage when testing his solar panel design. But it turns out Dwyer is totally getting the last laugh here, and is proving that nerdy 13-year-old go-getters actually are just better at life than most people on the Internet. Dwyer's spoken at PopTech's annual innovation conference and is scheduled to speak at the World Future Energy Summit.

Critical List: Patagonia becomes a Benefit Corporation; oil industry threatens Obama

Patagonia has become a Benefit Corporation, which means it can prioritize goals other than profit.

The oil industry is sending a message to Obama: Approve the Keystone XL pipeline, or face the political music in 2012.

It is possible to avoid earthquakes when disposing of fracking wastewater. It's just really, really expensive.

The U.S. isn't the only country leery of the EU's carbon trading airline scheme: China's protesting, too.

Huge strides in fuel efficiency innovation canceled out by bigger cars

If, and this is true, automakers have made huge strides in fuel efficiency over the past 30 years, why aren't we all driving the 100 MPG ubercars we were promised at Epcot Center when we were but wee lads and lasses?

The answer is that our cars, like our homes and just about everything else we consume, have been supersized, says MIT economist Christopher Knittel.