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When talking about global warming, we often tend to think about droughts, water shortage and desertification. But we must not forget that 72%, almost three quarters of our planet is covered in oceans – and believe it or not, that’s where global warming will strike the hardest. A thorough study Oceanic global warming is causing […]
Japan’s Twittersphere has just rediscovered (and is loosing its collective mind over) what is probably the cutest sea slug ever – Jorunna parva, a sea slug that looks like a fluffy bunny.
The world’s next massive extinction will most likely be caused not by an asteroid impact, volcano activity or alien invasion, but by us humans. A study that looked at the past and present rates of extinction found that plants and animals are going extinct 1,000 times faster than they did before humans walked on Earth’s […]
Three startups – Carbon Engineering, Global Thermostat and Climeworks – are making machines capable of managing the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The new devices literally suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
We’re more used to whales washing up ashore, but sharks also do it sometimes. This juvenile shark was apparently trying to hunt some seagulls and ventured out of the water too much for its own good. However, after struggles and apparent dehydration, the shark was saved by beachgoers. Initially, we see the two meter shark […]
The media is abuzz with disturbing headlines, warning us that even reduced levels of global warming will cause massive sea level rise, up to 20 feet (6 meters). Unfortunately, that’s true. But what’s almost as worrying is that everyone is treating this as news, when in fact, we’ve known for quite a while that this […]
Meet one of slickest and twisted virus nature has to offer. Called IIV-6/CrIV , researchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia discovered the virus effectively castrates crickets, while promoting sexual activity at the same time like an aphrodisiac so it can spread. It’s an incredibly effective strategy for the virus, but can we learn anything from it? […]
Tony Abbott, the Australian PM has been warned he is putting international investment at risk after ordering the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation not to finance new wind power. Abbott, who is a firm support of the waning coal industry has escalated his war on renewable energy, attempting to block massive investments. Wind power is […]
In the most comprehensive study ever conducted of the impacts of climate change on critical pollinators, scientists have discovered that global warming is rapidly shrinking the area where these bees are found in both North America and Europe.
Most days are windy in Denmark, but Thursday was unusually so – it was so windy that the country got its entire energy needs and more solely from wind turbines. During the afternoon it was already reported the Nordic nation’s wind turbines were producing 116 per cent of Denmark’s electricity needs, and the figure rose to […]
An email recently unearthed by one of the their own scientists casts the blame on ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company in the world, as they had data pertaining to climate change as early as 1981 - seven years before it became public issue. They chose to fund deniers of the problem for the next 27 years.
If you’ve learned during the biology classes in school that the animals are going to adapt no matter the circumstances, your teacher did a great job. Turns out that frogs aren’t the exception to the rule, quite the contrary. New studies show that tree frogs seem to be using city drains in order to amplify the […]
Cone snails have one of the most dangerous venom in the animal kingdom. This complex venomous soup is made up of thousands of chemicals used both to hunt prey and ward off predators. The venom is enough to kill a human in a matter of minutes. Now, these lethal chemicals could be used to create a new class of painkiller for chronic pain and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, according to University of Queensland researchers. The same team also used a genetic and proteomic to find out how the cone snails developed its venom. Apparently, the animals initially used their chemical weaponry as a defense mechanism and later on adapted it into an attack.
Coral populations are crucial to the health of oceanic environments, but corals are also extremely vulnerable to changing conditions. Researchers warn that warming waters and ocean acidification lead to coral bleaching which can cause massive damage across both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
A simple smartphone app combines the most reliable data and maps on global renewable energy potential, so you can get a better idea what's the right kind of equipment you need or if the investment is warranted in the first place. And it's all for free, too.
Adidas new shoes are trash – literally. The German company has announced the creation of a new type of shoes made from recycled garbage pulled out of the ocean; the sustainable prototype has the upper part made entirely of yarns and filaments reclaimed from illegal deep-sea gillnets and other ocean waste, while the bottom part is […]
Germany is taking some serious strides in its attempt to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent until 2020: the European country announced that it will shut down several coal-fired plants and move towards more sustainable energy sources. “Coal-fired plants with a capacity of 2.7 gigawatts will be shut down,” said the government sources, who declined to […]
Remember the Koch brothers? They're industrialists and businesspeople who own the second largest privately owned company in the United States (with 2013 revenues of $115 billion); their main business is in manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum.
The Danish-based Lego is one of the big companies in the world that's actually making large scale efforts to lower its carbon footprint and run more sustainable business. They don't seem to be doing it out of a fake corporate responsibility ethos either. Lego is actually innovating. I mean, when a company says it wants to ditch the raw material its business is based on for something that's more expensive and which might not even exist yet, you know they actually mean it.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has rejected a proposal to list North American wild horses as threatened or endangered, arguing that a horse is a horse, wild or tame, and proponents have failed to show how the behaviour of wild horses differs from that of domestic ones. The number of North American wild stallions has […]
A team led by scientists at University of British Columbia highlights the impacts of climate change on the world's oceans and marine life. Two scenarios were analyzed. One followed the changes that would arise if the world banded together to significantly curb greenhouse gas emissions; the other summarized impacts 100 years from now if we'd go on with business as usual. The report outlines the consequences under each scenario and found immediate action is required if we're to avert at a catastrophic outcome, particularly regarding the planet's oceans.
Environmentalists and engineers have often argued against golf courses (especially abandoned golf courses), considering them a waste of space and resources, and for good reason. Golf courses cover huge areas of ground which could be used for something more productive. Now, Japanese company Kyocera is building a huge solar power plant on such an abandoned course.
Rising temperatures are fundamentally changing the way Australia's bearded lizards get their gender. Basically, the lizard's sex is not dependent on their genes as before, but on temperature. In time, the male chromosome could disappear, as more and more females are bred - the preferred sex. What this means is that if temperatures reach a critical level, then the lizards could become extinct due to lack of males. This has never happened before and it's as scary, as it is interesting.
As the US starts to thaw its relationship with Cuba, important economy, touristic and cultural prospects start to emerge; but as these prospects emerge, so to do environmental concerns. Cuban scientists are worried that as American tourists and money start flowing into their country, the environment will be the one to suffer. “We don’t have […]
Saber-tooth cats, the bane of early humans (and pretty much every creature that co-existed with them), roamed the Earth for 42 million years before going extinct at the end of the ice age. Now, a new study has found that their trademark teeth may have evolved later in their evolutionary stage, but when they grew, they grew […]
This little iron fish may look like a two bit souvenir, but what it can do is far more spectacular, not to mention useful. When added in boiling water, the fish-shaped object leaches just enough iron to offer up to 75 percent of daily iron needs of a person. Tests so far have proven that this simple, yet innovative the solution helped halve the cases of iron-deficiency anemia in Cambodian communities.
The Great Barrier Reef, which stretches 2,000km (1,200 miles) along the coast, is the world’s largest living ecosystem. Environmental groups are pushing to get the reef listed as “in danger” by the UNESCO, so that the Australian government would have to work harder to protect it from various dangers such as pollution, dredging, fishing and […]
It's so simple and incredibly useful I can't believe no one developed it before - a way to give leftover food from parties and meetings to homeless people who really need it.
Whether it’s Meatless Monday, Weekday Vegetarianism or simply cutting down meat consumption – people from developed countries are eating less meat, and it’s already making a difference. Even though some argue that cutting-back-consumption campaigns don’t push enough of a paradigm-shift, we’re already seeing the changes: 400 million animals were spared in the US alone in 2014 because […]
Today, ray-finned fish make up 99% of all fish species, but it wasn't always like this. In an attempt to find out what triggered this spectacular multi-niche dominance, paleontologists traveled back in time sort of speak and analyzed ancient fossils to see what the fish diversity makeup looked like millions of years ago. Intriguing enough, the ray fish practically exploded in their diversity right after the last great mass extinction which occurred 65 million years ago. An asteroid impact wiped out thousands of species, including all dinosaurs. But there was now enough room for other creatures to take their place. On land, mammals started filling in the large-scale niches eventually reaching a dominant position. In the water, it was the ray-finned fish that seized the opportunity.
The effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are great and long reaching - a new study has found that pink salmon in the Pacific Ocean are threatened by increasing ocean acidification.
You wouldn’t expect a dog and a turtle to be best friends, but as we’ve learned on the Internet, the animal kingdom can create some surprising friendship relationships. It all started when Christine Hilberg, a 29-year-old photography retoucher and animal Instagrammer rescued Puka, a 4-year-old mixed breed with a cleft lip from a homeless man in Los […]
Despite what you might have seen or not seen, there are actually some fireflies living west of the Rocky Mountains, though they mostly keep to themselves and are rarely spotted by humans. Every once in a while, people spot some. This time, one undergrad who was busy insect hunting in the Los Angeles County hit the jackpot after he discovered a new firefly species.
A new study has found that monarch butterfly populations have went down at alarming rates in the past couple of decades, going down on average by 80%. In the forests of Mexico, they went down by as much as 90%.
In the last couple of months, Japanese women flocked in unusual numbers to the Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Japan to see the main attraction in the flesh: a western lowland gorilla named Shabani. Apparently, the young Japanese women are going crazy after the gorilla's alleged good looks.
We seem to be losing the war on elephant poachers, but a new toolset that involves tracing slaughter hotspots in Africa based on DNA taken from ivory might be exactly what law enforcement needed all these years. This way, researchers at University of Washington, in collaboration with INTERPOL, found that most of the ivory seized since 2006 originates in just two areas.
Rwanda's Akagera national park will soon be home to seven lions flown in from South Africa. This is the first time in 15 years that lions will set foot in the country after the entire population was wiped out by cattle herders in the chaos that followed the 1994 genocide. The predators will hopefully mate and steadily replenish lion numbers back to a historical level.
National Geographic invites photographers from around the world to enter the 2015 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest – but hurry up, the final submission date is 30 June! Eligible contestants can visit natgeo.com/travelerphotocontest to submit photographs in any or all of four categories: Travel Portraits; Outdoor Scenes; Sense of Place; and Spontaneous Moments. The entry fee […]
Coral reefs are as important to oceanic ecosystems as they are vulnerable to global warming and ocean acidification. Coral reefs are being destroyed around the world, not only because of risint temperatures, but also due to coral mining, agricultural and urban runoff, pollution (organic and inorganic), overfishing, blast fishing, disease, and the digging of canals and access […]
The team looked at 15-years worth of data on California's grasslands, and documented declining plant diversity from 2000 to 2014 at both the local community (5 m2) and landscape (27 km2) scales, across multiple functional groups and soil environments. They found a link between wildflower diversity decline to significant decreases in midwinter precipitation.
When the freakish Hallucigenia was first discovered in the 1970s, paleontologists found it nearly impossible to distinguish heads from tail. Now, the bizarre creature - an ancestor to molding animals like crabs, worms or krill - had its features identified with unprecedented precision, but that doesn't mean it's less freakish looking: worm-like with a mouth adorned with a ring of teeth, bearing seven pairs of legs ending in claws, and three pairs of tentacles along its neck. To finish it off, its back was covered with enormous spikes. Yes, it looks weird, but so were most animals that lived 500 million years ago during the so-called Cambrian explosion - a period of massive bloom in terms of diversity of life and evolution. Most creatures of those times were somewhat primitive, but remarkably Hallucigenia was quite advanced for its age.
Taking a radically opposite stance on how we design our furniture, designer and innovator Gavin Munro has come up with a unique way to create furniture. Instead of cutting wood and joining the pieces together, he simply grows trees into chairs or tables. The idea is simple, yet innovative: let nature do all the work, and […]
Researchers at University of Hawaii, Manoa in collaboration with a team from the University of Tokyo were surprised to find not one, but two species of deep-water sharks that have positive buoyancy. Most sharks have a negative buoyancy, meaning if they stop swimming they'll sink to the bottom, and some researchers have posited that there may be some species with neutral buoyancy. Finding sharks that defy this conventional wisdom is definitely an important discovery. Now the researchers are trying to find out how the positive buoyancy is attained and whether other shark species have this ability.
More job opportunities could be created by investing clean energy sources than fossil fuels.
Geological evidence indicates that our planet has seen five mass extinction cycles since life first appeared on the planet. While they sound like the kind of cataclysmic events that only beardy men with huge boats survive through (read that in a book once, so it must be true), they are actually an integral part of […]
This Friday, the International Whaling Commission issued a report in which it states Japan has failed to provide any reasonable explanation for its mass killing of over 4,000 whales in the Antarctic for the past 12 years. The country says it's hunting whales for research purposes, but clearly it's all a front. A lame excuse. Unimpressed by the report, Japan officials claim there's a debate and lack of consensus (not really), and even though it "acknowledges" the IWC position it will likely continue as before. In other words, they don't care.
A novel, previously unseen self-repair mechanism was reported by a team of researchers at Caltech who studied the moon jellyfish. A lot of animals, mostly invertebrates, grow back their lost limbs after these are bitten off by predators or lost in an accident. The moon jellyfish, however, employs a different tactic altogether: instead of expending a lot of energy to regrow its lost limb, the animal re-arranges the limbs it has left to regain symmetry. Even when it's left with two limbs out of its initial eight, the jellyfish will still re-arrange itself. This sort of mechanism might prove extremely useful in designing self-repairing robots.
A research group working at the Australian Grains Free Air CO₂ Enrichment facility (AgFace) in Victoria is studying the effect elevated carbon dioxide will have on crops such as wheat, lentils, canola and field pea. They grow experimental crops in the open, surrounded by thin tubes that eject carbon dioxide into the air around the plants. Findings show that crops have higher yield (up to 25% more), but less proteins. Elevated CO2 also seems to ruin bread made from the grown wheat.
Wild bees provide environmental services worth $3,250 (€2,880) per hectare per year - accounting for billions, globally. Writing in Nature Communications, study authors quantify how much bees are doing for us, and stress that despite all their immense value, we still don't have a concrete plan to stop their numbers from dwindling.
We tend to think of the Earth's water as an inexhaustible resource; after all, you learn the basic water cycle in first grade - water moves from the rivers to the oceans and then evaporates into the atmosphere and then it comes back as rain - so how could it be disappearing? Well, the reality is much more complex than that, and as two different studies showed, we may actually be heading towards a major water crisis.
