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With a potential ZIka pandemic luring over the Americas, one Long Island town is stepping up to bat.
A Canadian think tank found that Canada's status as a 'world superpower' is threatened because the world is shifting away from fossil fuels faster than expected, opting more and more for renewable energy.
A study of 84 reefs along the Great Barrier Reef revealed one-third of the coral reefs of the central and northern regions have died due to a huge bleaching event. Corals to the north of Cairns, which account for two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef, are also massively affected with 35 percent dead or dying.
Human activity has been wreaking havoc on ocean life. One group however seems to thrive where others struggle to survive: new evidence shows that cephalopods' numbers have significantly increased over the last six decades.
According to a 179-page report released by the U.N., biodegradable plastics degrade far too slow in the oceans, voiding any apparent practical benefit. In the ocean at least, they're just as bad, if not worse in some instances, than traditional plastics.
The park will be the biggest urban protected area in Europe.
An offshore of Royal Dutch Shell is responsible for a new oil spill which covered a 13- by 2-mile sheen of oil on the waves.
The visual effect was extremely strong, and everything was completely safe, activists say.
Humans are throwing away an insane quantity of food, both in the developed and in developing countries. While in the latter case this can be attributed to economic and technological constrains, the former is primarily consumer-driven. And the sum of individual choices adds up to major impacts on a global scale, a new study finds.
A new study suggests that in the United States, residents might experience three to nine more days of unhealthy ozone levels by 2050.
It’s one of the most common confusions in the English language. In short, silicon is the chemical element Si, while silicone is a synthetic polymer. Although it appears like the words are synonyms and can be used interchangeably, they’re not and they designate completely different things. Let’s detail a bit on what each of them are, […]
The Environmental Defense Fund’s Oil and Gas program has released a new nation-wide report of the most common sites of methane leaks at oil and gas pads. Surprisingly, most of the leaks were traced back to faulty piping, vents or doors on gas tanks in newer, not older, wells.
India-based company Bakeys has started producing edible spoons to try and fight world-wide plastic waste from disposable cutlery. Not only eco-friendly, but also delicious!
A London-based customer of Whole Foods tweeted a photo of peeled oranges, packed in plastic. Her photo and comments are on point.
Europe is likely to lose all its ash trees, the largest-ever survey of the species warns. Plagued by both a fungal disease known as ash-dieback and an invasive species of beetle, the emerald ash borer, the tree might be wiped clean off of the continent.
A new collaboration study between NASA and Harvard University found that climate change is breaking an important link between droughts and the grape harvests in France and Switzerland.
A new study analyzing sea level rise forecasts as well as population growth projections found that we've underestimated just how many people would be impacted by rising waters. Anywhere from 4.3 to 13.1 million people from the US alone will face the risk of inundation by 2100, according to their estimate.
Japanese researchers have identified a bacteria that eats PET, a kind of plastic widely employed for bottles. This is the first time such an organism has been found, and others like it -- maybe more versatile in their preference for plastic -- might be found.
A new paper suggests that we've been overlooking how two key human responses to climate -- the total area farmed and the number of crops planted -- will impact food production in the future.
They may not look like much, but coffee pods are a big problem.
This Friday, the tiny island nation of Fiji put up a big flag on the map by becoming the first country in the world to ratify the UN climate deal put together last December at the Paris COP21.
CO2 interferes with neuroreceptors in the brain of fish, causing them to behave as if drunk. By 2100, fish in half of the world's water might be intoxicated in this way.
A few months after it was proposed, the law was approved in December and it's now official.
The Chinese government seems determined to phase out coal from their economy.
Plastic bags, bottle caps and plastic fibres are among the myriad of micro plastic debris that wash out into the Pacific Ocean. These get ingested by the marine life like fish, mammals and birds which are dying from choking, intestinal blockage and starvation. Moreover, some are toxic pollutants that are absorbed, transported, and consumed in the food chain eventually reaching humans. The most effective way to contain microplastics is to raise floating nets around Asia's coats, not around the Great Pacific Garbage patch, researchers reckon.
After they studied how much man-made heat got sucked by the world's oceans in the past 150 years, researchers found the heat content doubled since 1997. In other words, the oceans absorbed just as much heat in the past 20 years or so as they did in the prior 130 years. There's more bad news. The rate at which oceans soaked the heat rose sharply since the 2000s and hasn't faltered since. This can only mean a re-doubling that comes with unforeseeable consequences in the coming decades.
The indispensable chemical mixture that allows the industry to fracture rock and release the gas trapped inside looks almost like a black box. More than 1,000 chemicals are used in the fracking fluid, but a paper published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology found toxicity information was lacking for 76% of them. In other words, these could be harmless or dangerous. There's no way to know at this point. Concerning the rest -- about 240 substances -- the researchers found evidence that suggests reproductive toxicity for 103 (43%), developmental toxicity for 95 (40%), and both for 41 (17%).
As we mentioned before, the largest gas leak in history is unfolding in California, but oddly enough, few people seem to care enough or understand the magnitude of what's happening.
A month ago, millions of gallons of toxic mining waste burst into the environment following a dam break in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Since then, the sludge has left behind a 500 mile (800 km) trail of polluted rivers and banks, ultimately reaching the Atlantic Ocean and marking Brazil’s worst environmental disaster in […]
In 2001 a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the United Kingdom was traced back to a farmer that illegally fed uncooked waste to his pigs. It left the country's agricultural industry in tatters -- over 10 million sheep and cattle were killed in an effort to contain the disease. Later that year EU legislators banned the use of human food waste (or swill) as pig feed, a decision that is now coming under a lot of fire from disgruntled livestock farmers and the scientific community.
All of the current Republican presidential candidates make a point of denying what scientists and the common folk have come to agree upon in much of the world, and of preserving the status quo in the energy sector. Why are these public figures, with aspirations of world leaders, basing so much of their policy on a fossil fuel-centric agenda that will only come back to bite us? In a revelation that shouldn't shock anyone who's even remotely aware of the concept of money, it's because they're being paid off.
The wealthiest man in the world, Bill Gates, will announce on Monday a massive private-government partnership for a new clean energy research fund. This is reportedly the biggest research and development fund for clean energy ever, which will funnel billions to support innovation in this section. The precise details of the multi-billion partnership will be revealed once with the opening of the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris.
Agriculture is a big driver of climate change, with the meat industry standing out among the rest as a source of CO2 emissions and environmental damage; lowering demand for meat or ensuring that farms have as little environmental impact is possible, but costly. Would you be willing to eat less, if it was for the good of the planet? Pay more for your meat? A new study suggests that the idea isn't as controversial as you may believe on first glance.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have never been higher: the average global CO2 levels have reached the 400 parts per million (ppm) milestone in the spring of 2015, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced in the first week of November. Secretary-General Michel Jarraud warns that it won't be long before even higher levels of the gas become a "permanent reality."
Raw human sewage isn’t in the news often enough. But infrastructure repair in Montreal has given sewage world attention. Starting Wednesday night, Montreal began dumping 8 billion litres of raw toilet flushings, garburator grindings, and shower stall drippings into the St. Lawrence River. The mayor says they had to do it. It’s not such a […]
Research at the Queen's University Belfast has produced a major (and mind-bending) breakthrough, in the form of the first synthesized porous liquid. The new material has the potential for a massive range of new technologies including carbon capture.
An illustrated series showcasing artworks that raise awareness on environmental issues.
The sheer use of water, which can have a huge environmental impact.
Havana lawyer, Dr Fidel Castro, in Washington DC, 1959. (Wikipedia) Besides sunshine and sugar cane, what has Cuba got? It looks like the USA is serious about letting Americans party along Havana’s beaches and carry home a cigar or two. For two generations, two of the continent’s closest neighbours have been estranged with nary a […]
A sinkhole popped up in St. Albans, England, and engineers fear this is not an isolated event.
In 2006, the US court found the tobacco industry guilty of a decades-long racketeering enterprise in which it conspired to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. The tobacco companies were ordered to buy newspaper ads detailing smoking's health effects and to stop using such descriptions as "low tar," "light," ultra light," "mild" or "natural" that might imply that they are less dangerous than other cigarettes. They were also ordered to pay $10 billion in fines. Speaking for ThinkProgress, Sharon Y. Eubanks - the leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted the landmark lawsuit against big tobacco - says the Department of Justice should investigate Exxon and possibly other fossil fuel industry players (Koch *cough) for a similar claim, only much worse. The conspiracy isn't only against smokers' health, it's against all life on Earth.
A recent U.S. study shows how the upward trend in economic damage from hurricanes correlates very closely to the influence global warming has on the number and intensity of hurricanes. Published in Nature Geoscience, it concludes that the commonly cited reasons for growing hurricane damage -- increases in vulnerability, value, and exposure of property -- don't stand up very well to scrutiny.
This Friday, the CEOs of the some of the biggest oil & gas companies in the world, including BP, Shell and Total, held a press conference asking for immediate action against climate change and urging world readers to reach an agreement in Paris, this December. The companies account for a fifth of the world's oil and gas production, the leading fossil fuels that are flooding the atmosphere with excess carbon and warming the planet, causing irreversible climate change. As such, if you find the statement dubious - not to mention hilarious - you're not alone.
Bad news for us -- and fish.
In a monumental decision, British Petroleum (BP) was fined $20.8 billion for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; this upgrades the initial deal from the $18.7 that were previously discussed and represents the largest corporate settlement in US history. This money is additional to the reported $28 billion spent on cleanup and compensation.
When it comes to human waste products and pollutants, plastic claims the crown. There are very few things our planet can throw at it to get rid of the polymer. It becomes bendy and rippy and shredy but it just won't go away. When you compound the resilience of this headstrong material with the sheer quantities of it that we dump into the oceans, it looks like a pretty one-sided battle that nature can't win, despite all our desperate efforts to increase recycling and take it out of landfills. But now it seems that mother nature still had a trick up her sleeve, and the non-biodegradable reign of plastic is about to come to an end, undermined by the heroic appetite of the mealworm.
Americans are sending much more trash to landfills than federal agencies estimated - twice as much, according to a new study.
Picture this: A city under siege. Many of the outlying buildings are old, dry, lifeless shells of their former beauty as nearly 50 percent of the population is wiped out, consumed by ravenous invaders. And the only hope of lifting the siege lies with a poison injecting, yellow robot.
Researchers studying the plastic problem our ocean is facing predict that by 2050 nearly every single maritime bird species will have plastic pieces inside their digestive systems. The grim prediction is based on a new study showing that about 90 percent of seabirds today have plastic in their bodies.
In 2014, Dutch teenager Boyan Slat made headlines when he came up with the so-called “Ocean Cleanup Array”—a floating barrier designed to cut down the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 42 percent within 10 years. Since this was a revolutionary way to deal with the global marine pollution problem, Slat naturally drew a lot of […]
