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A new proposed amendment in the UK would make a mockery of existing European shale gas regulation. If the new regulation would pass, it would allow fracking companies to put “any substance” under people’s homes and property and leave it there, as part of the Infrastructure Bill. The wording of the bill would also allow storing nuclear […]
The single most threatening species to U.K.’s biodiversity is a species of mussels – the quagga mussel. Coming from the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in Eastern Europe, the quagga mussel came with four other freshwater invaders which have now become a huge danger for Britain’s wildlife. The quagga mussel, scientific name Dreissena rostriformis […]
A cloud of methane gas about the size of Delaware was detected over the Four Corners area of the American southwest years ago. But people didn’t take it seriously, because (believe it or not) – it was so big that they thought it was an instrument error. “We didn’t focus on it because we weren’t sure […]
A team at University of Cambridge have harvested so-called ‘dark’ spin-triplet excitons with close to 100% efficiency, a breakthrough achievement which could vastly improve the efficiency of hybrid solar cells that use both organic and inorganic semiconductor junctions. An exciting solar future Excitons are basically electrons coupled to a hole (they’re attracted to each other and […]
The ocean abyss hasn’t warmed significantly since 2005, according to a new NASA study, further deepening the mystery of why global warming has apparently ground to halt in the past couple of years. The researchers stress, however, that the findings do not indicate that there isn’t any man-made climate change; sea levels are still rising, it’s […]
Chimps, our closest relatives, can pass down knowledge and skills, like using a new tool for instance, and establish cultural communities, according to a recently study published in PLOS Biology. Communicating and passing down skills, inventions and knowledge is considering a pre-requisite to what we commonly refer to as human culture, and the findings suggest that […]
When people think of sharks, the most immediate response might be jaws, fright or blood, but if you're willing to set prejudice aside you might find that these animals aren't that different from most of us; at least in one important respect: social interactions.
Different types of clouds form under different circumstances, although they all originate from the same process: the condensation of water. Though most people would categorize clouds as either fluffy, dark or scary, there are actually many types of clouds classified according to the height they form at and texture. Weather geeks have a reason to […]
Researchers at MIT report they’ve developed a novel material that can absorb almost all incoming wavelengths of light and convert the energy into heat. The radiated heat emitted by the material can then be collected by photovoltaics for later conversion into electricity. The material is cheap to make using currently available manufacturing processes, can absorb […]
Every year, the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) in Copenhagen welcomes renowned designers and engineers to submit designs that integrates renewable energy in harmony with citizens, nature, and the urban environment. This year’s winning entry is a fantastic solar power array that takes the form of a hourglass, unveiled by Argentina-based designer Santiago Muros Cortés. The project, if […]
The UK’s first floating solar farm has been unveiled in Berkshire; the array features 800 photovoltaic panels and has a capacity of 200W. The project cost £250,000 ($405,400) and has been installed on a reservoir at Sheeplands Farm near Wargrave. Solar energy provides many advantages, but also raises many problems. Among those problems is land area […]
As if dolphins weren’t special enough, scientists have added another quality to the list: they can sense our planet’s magnetic field. A surprising variety of animals can sense the Earth’s magnetic field – bees, birds, salmon, frogs, sea turtles, salamanders, lobsters, and rodents; now, you can also add dolphins to that list. French researchers have shown […]
Australia went through two almost unbearable consecutive summers. Of course, Australia is a naturally hot country, but the temperatures were extremely high even for them. Record temperatures were recorded and heat waves swept throughout the entire country. Now, five separate studies published today conclude that the blazing summers can be blamed on man-made climate change. Sizzling […]
Some 100,000 people die each year from venomous snakes bites. Most die because there's not enough antivenom.
Global wildlife populations have decreased by more than half, concludes a new report released by the WWF. The extent of this major destruction came as a shock and showed just how far we are from reaching a sustainable future and living in harmony with the Earth’s biodiversity. Losing Biodiversity The report shows that the worst […]
President Obama has signed a proclamation which will make the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument the largest marine reserve in the world. Up until now, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was a group of unorganized, mostly unincorporated United States Pacific Island territories managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. They host many important species, including corals, […]
The Aral Sea is was one of the largest lakes in the world, with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi). Lying between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, its water level has constantly decreased since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. By 2007, it had declined to 10% of its original […]
The Mantis Shrimp has some of the most amazing eyes in the animal kingdom. Researchers have shown that among others, it is able to detect a variety of cancers and visualize brain activity. Now, scientists from Queensland University have studied how the mantis shrimp’s eyes are superbly tuned to detect polarized light, and literally see cancers. Professor Justin […]
Scientists have discovered a toxic, brightly colored and extremely small dart frog in the hilly areas near the Caribbean coast. Measuring just 12.7 millimeters in length, the newly described Andinobates geminisae is quite mysterious. The first strange thing about it is that it looks very different from its closest genetic relatives; namely, it’s bright orange. Andrew Crawford, a […]
Given the shale boom, the United States has now become the world’s leading natural gas producer. Because it only releases 50% as much emissions for the same equivalent amount of energy produced by oil or coal, many have herald it as a cleaner source of fossil energy, whose widespread introduction might help mitigate global warming. […]
Radars picked up a “strange cloud” with a bizarre shape above the US Midwest. Upon a closer look, it was revealed that the cloud was actually monarch butterflies traveling from Canada to Mexico – an iconic migration which has been less and less visible in recent years, but may make a resurgence in 2014. Monarch butterflies […]
Smaller, yet heavier then their legendary brethren, the giant squid, the colossal squid is an elusive animal that lives deep in the Antarctic waters. Scientists have known of their existence since the 1920s, judging from scraps found inside whales and sucker imprints on whale skin. It wasn’t until 2007 that the first complete specimen was found, […]
Norway will pay impoverished African country Liberia $150m (£91.4m) to entirely stop deforestation by 2020. Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world, and its economy is extremely underdeveloped. Mix this current situation with the recent Ebola outbreak, and you get a recipe for disaster. Logging is a simple source of revenue in such […]
Environmental groups were outraged when Google announced in 2013 that it would fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a well known anti-global warming organization who’s on a mission to kill renewable energy projects and introduce climate change denial literature in schools. Now, Eric Schmidt, former CEO and current Executive Chairman of Google, says that funding […]
Some 400,000 people participated in the New York Climate March – which has become the largest climate march in history. The march began at 11:30 am, and several government officials and celebrities participated as well (UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, former vice president Al Gore, NY mayor Bill de Blasio, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator Bernard Sanders, U.S. […]
Despite significant steps towards a more sustainable future, China is still the world’s most polluting country – and it’s not only their sheer population that’s the cause. A new study conducted by two British researchers revealed that China emits more CO2 per capita than Europe. They also estimate that we have already released two thirds of […]
Tokyo announced a new round of culls in the Southern Ocean despite the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banning them from doing that. Sadistic hunts Despite sparking international outrage due to whaling, Japan shows no signs of stopping. A UN ban didn’t stop them, and apparently, neither will and IWC one. The 65th meeting of the world’s whale conservation […]
It may seem clear, but you need a study to have certainty: public transportation is cheap and “green”. A recent research concluded that effective public transit systems can provide a cost-effective solution to fighting global change at a global level. If public transits are improved throughout the entire world, the report shows that urban transportation could be cut […]
Everyone knows that Greenland isn’t exactly green – it’s covered in snow, so it should be white. Except… it’s not white anymore. Jason Box, a member of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, has been studying the snow in Greenland over the summer and his observations are seriously disturbing. According to him, the snow is […]
Texas wants to rewrite 6th grade school books to deny that climate change is caused by humans, falsely claiming scientific disagreement on the topic. The proposed Texan science book writes “scientists…do not agree on what is causing the [climate] change”. Let’s take a moment to analyze the facts here. While climate change denial may be […]
The BP trial just keeps getting more and more interesting. After being fined $17.8 billion the giant oil company keeps trying to do funny stuff – even in court. A judge reprimanded BP for using tactics that would “not be appropriate for a college term paper”, after they tried to sneak in an extra 6 pages into a […]
In the 1950s rainforests covered 14% of the earth’s land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. It’s believed that deforestation accounts for about 20% of global emissions of CO2, because of the a reduced carbon storage capacity. Yet there […]
Stanford researchers traced back methane leaks from contaminated drinking water in Pennsylvania and Texas to shale gas wells. However, they note that they did not find a link between the contamination and the technique used to drill for shale gas itself, called hydraulic fracturing or more commonly known as fracking. Instead, the researchers concluded that […]
According to the EPA, Americans waste some 30-40 percent of all the food they use. Even not considering the poorest areas such as Africa or SE Asia where food is almost a luxury, there are 50 million Americans who don’t have daily access to adequate food; reducing food waste could improve and save countless lives. Food […]
The world is currently on a downward spiral, risking reaching a point of no return where global warming can no longer be reversed – not in due time at least. We’re already 50ppm of CO2 (parts per million) over the 350ppm average atmospheric CO2 concentration, considered by leading experts the carbon stabilizing threshold. It’s increasingly […]
This year has been full of encouraging news from China – apparently, they’re committed to their war on pollution, and not only has their coal consumption decreased, but coal consumption has also decoupled from economic growth – that is, their economy is growing even as they use less coal. Now, China’s carbon emissions saw the […]
A new method of producing hydrogen has been reported by researchers at University of Glasgow that’s 30 times faster than current state-of-the-art methods, providing yet another advance that might one day lead to a sustainable hydrogen based economy. There’s only so much that renewable energy can grow with today’s infrastructure due to base load considerations. […]
A federal judge has called major oil company BP (British Petroleum) “reckless”, and Transocean and Halliburton “negligent” following the major oil spill of 2010. The US District Judge Carl Barbier has ruled that BP’s “gross negligence” was the main culprit for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which is considered to be the biggest marine disaster in […]
U.N. scientists released a report in which they conclude man-made carbon emissions released between 2012 and 2013 were higher than in any other year since 1984. If this trend is set to continue, the planet will reach a tipping point where global warming will become an irreversible phenomenon that could cause enough sea level rise, drought, and severe […]
Like most developing nations, India is burning a lot of coal to catch ground. As always the case with compromises such as these, economic growth comes at the expense of the environment. Pollution in Delhi, the capital, has reached levels comparable to Beijing, which is when you know you’ve hit a new low. A new study […]
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued the first ever permit that will allow a coal plant to store some of its carbon emissions underground, as a means of mitigating global warming. The idea has been around since George W. Bush, but time and time again its been scrapped largely for economic considerations. Ten years later, FutureGen […]
We often report how many species around the world are becoming extinct, but it’s heart warming to report from time to time that some conservation efforts really do work. For instance, a new report found that Blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), the largest animals on Earth, have steadily increased in population around the Californian waters to the […]
A new study concluded that there’s about a 1 in 100,000 chance that the global warming in the past 60 years is not caused by human-released greenhouse gas emissions. It’s much more a debate between TV shows and regular Joes than it is between scientists – you could basically call it a consensus by now, […]
Researchers at University of Texas at Arlington conducted tests on more than 100 water wells in Texas and found 30% of these contained ‘alarming’ amounts of arsenic, enough to be considered carcinogenic and seriously threatening human health. These contaminated wells were found in the vicinity of known fracking sites and prior to drilling these were found […]
Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have created a thin metamaterial surface that is capable of absorbing nearly all of the acoustic energy (sound). Unlike conventional sound absorbing material that is sometimes only effective when meters thick, the metasurface is deeply “subwavelength” and therefore much thinner. There’s a catch though: the system has been demonstrated […]
For most people, it would seem clear that humans are the smartest creatures on the face of the Earth, but is this really the case? We are the ones who control the world, we create art, we understand our bodies and how the universe works – but are we innately more intelligent? A group of […]
NASA reports significant quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals are still leaching into the atmosphere despite an international ban signed by all the world's governments thirty years ago.
From the tropics to the poles, bird populations all over the world are facing a sharp decline, cornered by climate change and exposure to man-made biochemicals, namely pesticides. According to to BirdLife International, one in eight species (more than 1,300 species) of birds are under serious threat of becoming extinct. The list includes iconic birds of pray and song like eagles, vultures, swifts or swallows, but also seabirds like sandpipers, pelicans or storks.
Researchers from Stanford have found a way to split water into oxygen and hydrogen using very little energy; the hydrogen they obtain could be used to power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles. I’m quite excited for cars that run on hydrogen, which are set to hit the market in 2015; but while they are always presented as […]
A worrying report states that over 500 bubbling methane vents were found on the seafloor off the US east coast. The unexpected finding suggests that there are large volumes of the gas contained in a type of sludgy ice called methane hydrate and as global waters continue to heat up, the methane will be released in large […]
