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NASA released a video that helps us visualize where the major CO2 emission hotspots are and how the greenhouse gas travels and swirls around the globe, guided by weather patterns. The CO2 emissions were mapped using data gathered during May 2005 to June 2007 with 64 times the resolution of a standard climate model, on a NASA supercomputer at […]
Since June, 2013 swarms of dying starfish have been riddling the North American western coast. The disease, called sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS), causes the star-shaped echinoderms to first curl from the tips, then swell and twist like a pretzel, followed by festering sores appearing on the flesh and ending in complete degeneration. A starfish […]
In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration launched a counter-offensive which went on to be known as the “War on Terror” and saw the US wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and most recently Syria. The WoT was initiated, in theory at least, to eliminate the threat from al Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, […]
We’re used to hearing how elephants are driven off by habitat lost, but never the other way around. Researchers at University of Florida claim that as overhunting has dramatically cut the number of elephants in the wild, but since these also disperse seeds, it seems like dominant tree species are also dying off. Along with the trees, […]
Interpol is launching the first-ever Most Wanted-style list for environmental criminals. This is a milestone achievement because it shows just how serious environmental crimes have become. These crimes include poaching, ivory trafficking and illegal logging – and the list is expected to grow. Andreas Andreou, an officer with Interpol’s environmental unit said: “Until recently, environmental offenses […]
With the EPA setting stricter guidelines for NOx emissions fired by coal plants, the industry is now in a position where it needs new, advanced technologies that clean flue gases. Such a solution might came from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which recently partnered with a leading coal corporation to implement its electron beam technology. […]
Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, have devised a model that projects how climate change affects atmospheric lightning discharges. According to their findings, global warming – particularly through more water vapor gathering in the upper atmosphere – will cause lightning strikes to increase in frequency by 50% during […]
Hydraulic fracking is one of the hottest topics right now – and while proposers and defenders of the method argue that everything is safe and there is no need to worry, the facts seem to only agree with them sometimes. Even if all the rules and regulations are followed, there would be some controversy; but […]
President Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to sign a deal that will see the US nearly double its efforts to cut CO2 emissions by 2025 and China cap its CO2 emissions for the very first time. This historic agreement between the two largest polluters in the world, which together amount to 45% of […]
A famous science communicator and TV personality, Bill Nye has served the world a huge favor with his programs, books and talks in which he argues in favor of science. Over the years, however, he’s had to handle all sorts of critical situations like last year’s now famous debate against Ken Han on creationism. Most recently, […]
Owing to its mass deployment of coal burning plants and the 7.4 million cars that fill its roads, Delhi now proudly stands as the city with the filthiest air in the world, and it’s only getting worse. Many agencies have recently issued health warnings for New Delhi residents, including the most vulnerable such as the elderly […]
This amazing animal is the pig-nosed turtle (Carettochelys insculpta), a native to the freshwater rivers, streams and lagoons of the Northern Territory in Australia and parts of southern New Guinea. With its delicate piggy snout, webbed flippers and beautiful colors, this turtle gives to show yet again why Australia is home to some of the world’s […]
Rich countries are effectively giving oil, gas and coal companies $88 bn a year to explore new reserves, despite clear evidence that those industries are causing global warming. From a climate change perspective, it would be best to leave those reserves in the ground and focus on renewable energy, but despite a huge growth, renewable […]
Over ninety percent of all the world’s ice is in Antarctica, where it can run 4000-5000 meters deep. Yet, as a result of global warming, the ice sheet is melting at a rapid rate making it the most significant contributing factor to world sea level rise. It’s simple to throw in a label like global warming […]
An international team of more than 100 scientists has undertaken a most complex and challenging task: they’ve determined the timings and patterns of evolution for most of the insect family tree, until they arrived at at the original insect foremother which lived some 500 million years ago. Thus, the researchers were able to pinpoint when the […]
It may be gloomy, windy and rainy, but the Scottish weather may have its upsides too. in October, Scotland generated enough power from wind to power up every single home in Scotland and a bit more. “Wind turbines alone generated an estimated 982,842MWh of electricity, enough to power 3,045,000 homes in the UK – equivalent […]
Scientists have long known that climate change has a major negative impact on global agriculture, potentially even threatening global food security. But a new research shows that air pollution is actually much more threatening. Anthropogenic climate change caused 3.5% decrease in potential wheat yield on a country level in India; air pollution caused more than 32% […]
Researchers at University of Utah have demonstrated for the first time a working biological fuel cell that uses enzymes to convert jet fuel into electricity; all at room temperature. Fuel cells are much cleaner and efficient at producing energy than internal combustion engines – theoretically, fuel cells can be up to four times more efficient since […]
Ever more municipalities and universities have joined the call to divest fossil fuel, thus reinforcing the message that these institutions are unwilling to back financially an industry that is a potential threat to our very own existence. Örebro in Sweden, Boxtel in the Netherlands and Seattle in the USA are all part of a growing push […]
Cloud Collective, a French and Dutch design company has come up with an elegant and green solution to clear up the environment around highways: suspended algae farms. So far, they have implemented such a system over a small stretch of highway in Geneva, Switzerland. Since algae works by absorbing CO2 and eliminating Oxygen into the air, […]
Some of us like to think that the energy needs of the future will be supplied by clean and renewable energy sources, but a recent report released by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research leads us through the mist and shows a cruel reality: coal, the dominant energy source in the world today, will continue […]
*This is a guest post written by professor Tim Birkhead. I will also add my personal opinions at the end of the article. There are several million fewer individual birds in Europe today than there were fifty years ago. We are living in a rapidly deteriorating environment. For our own sakes we should be concerned […]
We keep hearing more about developments made in the photovoltaic field, but we have to keep in mind that this is not the only way in which solar energy can be harvested and used. A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants, absorbing […]
Take a look at this magnificent fanged deer – this is not some Hollywood production or imaginary creature, this is a genuine Kashmir Muskdeer (Moschus cupreus), previously thought to be extinct, and now observed for the first time in 60 years in the forests of Afghanistan. There are actually several species of fanged deer, the most […]
Denmark’s climate minister says that the country should ban coal use by 2025 to make the Nordic nation a leader in fighting global warming; other measures he encourages are using bicycles and improving the wind energy infrastructure. Denmark is already one of the world’s leaders when it comes to green energy. They have considerable oil and natural gas […]
Europe has an estimated 421 million fewer birds than it did 30 years ago, a startling study has found. The current trends show an unsustainable development, and if things continue with ‘business as usual’, we can expect even more decrease and even extinctions. Some of the birds that have suffered the most alarming declines are […]
Developing countries are catching up fast and there’s a lot the rich can learn, especially in terms of energy. A study of 55 nations found that developing countries like China, Brazil, South Africa, Uruguay and Kenya are installing renewable energy projects at almost twice the rate of developed nations. In many of these countries renewable energy […]
Hima Hassenruck-Gudipati graduated this year from Caltech. She majored in mechanical engineering but minored in geology and her main area of interest was seeing how green technology and engineering can help mitigate the effects of climate change. Now, she has embarked on a global quest to understand the past, the present, and the future of climate change. […]
3-D printing has taken the world by storm, and even though we’ve already discovered a myriad of potential applications, we’re just beginning to scratch the surface on what the technology can actually do. From cranium replacements to fossils, from artificial ears to artificial skin and from bacteria to livable rooms, 3-D printing has done it all, […]
An UK design firm is proposing a most daring idea: replace the windows in a plane with super-light smartscreen panel made from organic LEDs (OLED). These panels would cover most of the plane’s inner surface and display the view from outside, better and lovelier than any windows could. Of course, you could choose to watch […]
The most complex computer simulation of its kind to date suggests that melting Arctic ice is significantly contributing to extreme cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere, with last winter’s Polar Vortex that swept the North American east coast serving as an example. Moreover, the analysis suggests that global warming has actually doubled the risk that […]
Zookeepers in Japan have learned that no matter how hard you try and no matter what some Arnold Schwarzenegger movies tell you, two males can’t have offspring. In what seems like an article taken straight from The Onion, staff at Maruyama Zoo in the northern city of Sapporo spent four years trying to get two […]
Germany has taken a pioneering role in terms of renewable energy, in Europa and even worldwide. Many countries are now negotiating or even applying renewable energy systems, but in Germany the situation is different – most of renewables are owned by individuals (as opposed to companies), and most of them are produced in the rural […]
Climate change has many unexpected consequences – as a research has shown yet again. This time, a team of Montana scientists have shown that the tea flavors are changing, mainly as a result of shifting rainfall patterns. This variability can jeopardize the livelihood of tea growers and has significant effects on the end product we […]
Friday morning, EU leaders finally reached an agreement for its 2030 energy target – member states have all agreed to reduce their green house gas emissions by 40%. Following the announcement, industry representatives voiced concerns that the decisions will affect the EU’s economy and competitiveness, while environmental groups on the other hand criticized the terms […]
Kenya has announced the launch the world’s largest single turbine geothermal power plant, which will add 140 Megawatts (MW) to the country’s national electricity grid. The project will bring much needed cheap energy to an impoverished country and fuel development in the area. A suitable area The Olkaria Area is an region located immediately to the […]
European Union leaders are currently meeting in Brussels to discuss the terms under which the Union will set its 2030 energy targets. Right now on the table, the plan is to cut CO2 emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by raising energy efficiency and the renewable energy slice. Such a convention is never without compromise, however. […]
Dr. Michael Honeycutt, the top toxicologist in the state of Texas argued that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shouldn’t tighten smog rules because there would be little to no health benefit. “Ozone is an outdoor air pollutant because systems such as air conditioning remove it from indoor air,” he argues on a blog post on […]
This year the world saw the worst Ebola outbreak on record with more reported cases than in all the past years combined. Much more. The latest update from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports 9,178 patients, of which 4546 have died. The actual number of people infected with Ebola is actually much larger, […]
A trio of newly published studies showed once again that natural gas is not a clean energy bridge – the studies highlighting the various problems associated with natural gas. Firstly, it was shown that emissions databases underestimate the methane released from fossil-fuel extraction in the U.S. Southwest. “A global gas boom is not a replacement for […]
Life on Earth has so far passed through five distinct crises that threatened to wipe it out, typically referred to as mass extinctions. The direst one was some 252 million years ago when 96 percent of marine species and 70 percent of life on land became extinct following a yet unconfirmed series of cataclysmic events known […]
The Alps may seem like a paradise, but the environmental situation is extremely dire. Just one in ten rivers are healthy enough to maintain water supply and to cope with climate impacts according to a report by WWF. The study is the first ever to take a look at all the Alpine rivers. The choked […]
Suni, a 37-year-old northern white rhino and only the second male of his kind left in the world, died recently of natural causes in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy reserve in Kenya. After his death merely six other specimens are now alive that still carry the legacy of this subspecies. Conservation efforts were heavily direct towards Suni, but now that the […]
Recycling is still a field where we have much work to do; while you hear talks about it everywhere, it’s still not done at a satisfying scale in most parts of the world. But Sweden is not part of that group. Virtually all of Swedish garbage is recycled; as a matter of fact, they are […]
What does the environment mean to you? The European Environment Agency asked this question and invited photographers to have their take through a visual essay. Ducks floating along garbage; a lone, yet dominant windmill set on a twilight background; a small frog resting by the petals of a beautifully colored flower. Each artist shared an unique […]
Lockheed Martin has officially entered the race to achieve nuclear fusion at room temperature on 15 October, laying out a 10-year roadmap to commercialize a reactor that would fit on the back of a lorry. The company has been working on the project for several years, but they’ve been extremely secretive about it until now, when […]
Acting tougher than you really are is not uncommon in the natural world – but this moth has taken it to the next level. The Hornet Moth (Sesia apiformis) has evolved to mimic not only the look, but also the mannerisms of a real hornet. The Hornet Moth is a large moth with a wingspan […]
Thousands of runners signed up for the Beijing marathon, hoping to better themselves in the 42 km race. But the 34th Beijing International Marathon which took place on Sunday was not a fit place for a record, as air pollution soared to 16 times the maximum recommended level. The air in Beijing is among the most polluted […]
Paleontologists have identified the first known animals that used internal fertilization instead of spawning – armor-coated swimmers, called antiarchs, which lived around 385 million years ago in lakes in what is now Scotland. The discovery is truly monumental since its the earliest known example of sexual dimorphism or differences in appearance between the sexes in the […]
Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or so the old adage goes, but how different are men and women? I won’t go into debates like whether or not men and women are neurologically the same – it’s a far too exhaustive and exhausting subject for such a short article. Clearly, however, men […]
