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Just a couple of days ago I was telling you about an ambitious and successful initiative to relocate black rhinos, but the situation is more dire than it appears at a first glance: the Western Black Rhino of Africa has been declared officially extinct, and two other subspecies are extremely close to meeting the same […]
A recent art photography exhibition, dubbed Amazon, is currently on display at Somerset House in London, which brings together two remarkable, distinct bodies of photography to highlight the plight of the Amazonian rainforest and the people living within it. Thus, the work of Brazilian Sebastião Salgado depicts the virgin beauty of the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical […]
In a bold and unconventional move, a critically endangered black rhino has been carried via helicopter over dangerous and rugged terrain, as part of the WWF‘s Black Rhino Range Expansion Project in South Africa. The helicopter flight took around 10 minutes, and the animal didn’t suffer any physical damage during this whole operation, according […]
The RRS James Cook, an UK research vessel, will spend six weeks studying the deep sea mountains of the Indian Ocean, as well as the animals located several thousands of meters below sea level. The purpose of this mission quite challenging. This year, a report published in the journal of Marine Policyfound that trawling is […]
Amid all the talk about Asia’s economic growth and their stable financial future, two major problem arise to cloud their bright dawn: climate change and pollution. With way more than half of the world’s population, Asia has more to lose than any other continent; and considering the ways adopted by some of the most developed […]
Part of an ambitious NASA survey over the Antarctic, which intends on 3D mapping the continent’s glaciers in detail, one of the project’s planes has sighted a huge, emerging crack on the icy surface. The crack is a 8-mile-long break in an ice shelf, the first sign hinting to the formation of an iceberg that will […]
There’s recently been a lot of fuss regarding the world population reaching the 7.000.000.000 mark; now, the truth is we’ve probably reached that number quite a while ago, but just didn’t know it. Anyway, in countries all over the world, hospitals and clinics marked the world’s population reaching 7 billion Monday with lavish ceremonies and […]
We all know coal energy is bad, but at least if you ask me, I would say that it’s used because it’s cheap. However, economists from the prestigious American Economic Review claim that coal plants cause twice as much damage than the coal they produce. After doing the math, they concluded that coal-fired electrical plants […]
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team has concluded its study, which had the objective of analyzing global temperatures ever since the 1950s. Their conclusion – since then, global average temperatures have risen by almost two Fahrenheit degrees, which is a lot. Yeah sure we’ve heard this a million times before, but why is this time […]
Using a pair of satellites that monitor the Earth, NASA recorded over 10.000.000 fires throughout the planet; they then took the recorded material and created an animation with it, as can be seen below. The animation also includes vegetation, snow cover, cloud cover, surface temperatures, and more. Africa was by far the ‘hottest’ continent, being […]
Bosco Verticale is an ambitious eco project in Milan, designed by architect Stefano Boeri, which tries to blend two discrepant mediums, urban and nature, into one harmonic whole. The project is comprised of two towers with giant cantilevered staggered balconies that permit fairly big trees to be accommodate, since there is a minimum of two storeys over […]
Global warming has significant consequences to Earth’s ecosystems, each effect triggering another one in a slew of chain reactions. Frighting enough, rising temperatures and changed global weather patterns has caused certain types of plants and animals to become smaller, claims a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Warmer and drier weather causes plants […]
We’ve become so accustomed to the imagery of huge stacks of solar panel arrays stretching across the scorching desert, that the idea of implementing solar panels in some of the coldest spots on Earth might be quickly judged as feeble. In reality, Japanese scientists claim in a recently published study that the most energy efficient […]
Part of an amazing initiative to lower its carbon footprint and inspire the rest of the aeronautical industry, billionaire Richard Branson recently announced in a press release that within three years Virgin Atlantic’s airplanes will be fueled by waste gas. The waste gas will come from the likes of power plants, steel works, and aluminum […]
In the darkest caves of southwest China, one can experience fragments of the long set Ice Age and travel back in time 30,000 years. No, there isn’t any time machine or stargate of some sort (scientists say time travel is impossible, I beg to differ), instead what you’ll find in one of the darkest corners […]
Well, it’s pretty obvious that the rotten, insalubrious sewage environment is perfect for fostering infectious diseases and virus cultures. What’s surprising however is actually the sheer number of viruses, most of them unknown, which biologists at University of Pittsburgh have described in a recently published study in the journal mBio. According to the researchers, there are around 1.8 […]
Shark populations have declined at a rapid pace during the past few decades, with a significant number of species being threaten by extinction. Considering the shark is a fairly sensitive species because of its difficult breeding cycle, makes it even more vulnerable. Thus, researchers looking to develop effective breeding programs have to take it up […]
Record low ice volumes in the arctic caused by global warming have been reported this year, and if there are still some climate skeptics among you, recent events concerning trading in the region might provide proof enough of dramatic change. Supertankers and giant cargo ships could next year travel regularly between the Atlantic and Pacific […]
Humanity seems determined to continue on a suicidal path and destroy much of the planet that surrounds us; so far we’ve been lucky, but if we continue in this line, we have a good chance of breaking the very fragile equilibrium our world has. In almost every forest, carbon is constantly being absorbed as trees […]
Earlier this year, NASA launched the Argentine SAC-D satellite that has a number of instruments whose sole goal is that of providing scientists with important data about the environment. Aquarius is the main instrument on-board the satellite, whose mission is to measure global sea surface salinity to better predict future climate conditions. Today, NASA released […]
Recent figures published in a report prepared by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency show that the world’s CO2 emissions have been steadily and significantly growing during the past two decades, reaching an all time peak this past year. Carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of global warming, rose 45 […]
In the past decade global warming levels have remained stable, despite no significant improvements in green house emissions have been observed. A lot of explanations have been hypothesized by scientists as to why this is happening, offering various factors like aerosol deflection of radiation or soot absorption, however according to a recently released report by […]
The arctic ice volume recorded last fall was the lowest ever since the first satellite reports were introduced, according to data furnished by a new study which used complicated weather modeling, ocean observations, submarine data, and space-age monitoring. “Sea ice volume is an important climate indicator,” said the team of scientists from Polar Science Center […]
In recent years, fishing is going out of control, and deep water fishing especially has to stop, because it depleted fish stocks that take longer to recover than other species. This is exactly the conclusion of a paper published by an international team of marine biologists, published in Marine Policy. The article describes how fishing […]
A three year survey that comprised of research flights from the Arctic to the Antarctic comes to an end, successfully depicting greenhouse gases unlike ever before. Greenhouse gases are gases that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range; they have a huge impact on our planet’s temperature, and any increase in the amount […]
For the first time, king crabs have been found on the edge of Antarctica, probably as a result of global warming, which has made this environment suitable for them, researchers claim. They suggest the crabs were washed in during an upsurge of warmer water, and that this can be extremely damaging to the local ecosystem […]
Oceana is the ocean conservation organization, and they’ve been doing a series of infographics which I found absolutely fantastic! So I’d like to share them with you, in the hope that you will too, as well as learn something. Infographic: Where Does Our Seafood Come From? Link Eighty-four percent of seafood eaten in the U.S. […]
Hurricane Irene is believed to be the 10th billion dollar disaster of 2011, which makes it a new record holder, taking down 2008, which only had 9 such disasters; and hey, we still have 4 months to go! Hopefully, by now, people will start to understand the cost of man’s impact on the plaet ever […]
A surprising innovation in wind turbine design named a ‘wind lens’ could triple the output of energy generated by wind, thus making it cheaper than nuclear power. The thing is, wind power is proportional to the wind speed cubed; so basically if you could increase the speed two times, the energy output would be increased […]
Whether you like him or not, you have to admit that he has been fighting for a noble and important cause for years now. Global warming is one of the greatest challenges we have to handle as a species, and it won’t be easy at all. Even as it is, it’s hard to change things […]
Following the recent failed launch of an unmanned vehicle in a three stage Soyuz rocket this past Wednesday, the International Space Station might become temporarily devoid of its crew by November, if NASA, who is in charge of the outpost, doesn’t deem the Russian spacecraft fit anymore to transport astronauts. A Soyuz rocket crashed Wednesday […]
As the saying goes, there are plenty of fish in the sea, but just how many, exactly? We are still far away from giving an accurate number, but according to a team of scientists working for the Census for Marine Life, the number we are looking at is 8.74 million, give or take 1.3 million, […]
A small, yet frightening earthquake, registered at 5.9 magnitude, sent shivers down people’s spines all the way from Ottawa, Canada to North Carolina as it hit the North American east coast. The earthquake first caused ground shacking at 1:51 p.m. ET, when it measured 5.9 in magnitude and lasted only 45 seconds, according to the […]
The orange goo that collected on the shores of Alaska and baffled scientists at first was believed to be a mixture of microscopic eggs and/or embryos deposited by some sort of crustacean. However, researchers at NOAA’s Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research, based in Charleston, South Carolina conducted another examination and concluded that […]
There’s only a month until the melt season theoretically melts and the refreezing time begins, but until then, the polar ice cap has begun shrinking again, and shows no signs of even slowing down the shrinking. “With about a month left in the sea ice melt season, the amount of further ice loss will depend […]
The famous volcano in Sicily has been subjected to a number of eruption in this highly active past year. This weekend however, residents of nearby towns on Sicily were treated to a spectacular show of tectonic fireworks as Europe’s most active volcano, Mt Etna, erupted in glorious fashion. Get just a hint of the real […]
There’s no secret to anyone, I believe, that the world is over-crowded right now. By the end of 2011, according to the U.N., the world population is set to reach a solid 7 billion, a billion more than in 1999. The United Nations, who’s been providing highly accurate population projections decades ahead, however warns that […]
It wasn’t just a devastating asteroid that killed off all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Scientists from Boston University now claim that a massive eruption of lava fronts around the world, coinciding with the asteroid impact, sealed their fate forever. The controversial theory is betting on two unusually hot blobs of mantle 1,700 miles […]
Studying the immense 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire, which burned 401 square miles and becoming the largest tundra fire on record, scientists have found that more carbon was spewed into the air in a few months than the entire Arctic tundra ecosystem normally absorbs in an average year. For the past 10,000 years tundra fires have been […]
Recently, China’s Yellow Sea has been clogged for a surface of nearly 7,700 square miles (20,000 square kilometers) by a massive algae front. Surprisingly enough, the algae spanning across great distances off the eastern provinces of Shandong and Jiangsu is a year to year visit, although authorities believe this year has been a bit more […]
A patrol by park rangers and an Ecuador navy ship made the largest shark seizure in the country’s history, when they detained a fishing vessel as it was casting its nets 20 miles inside the Galapagos Marine Reserve. On board they found 357 dead sharks. The government news agency says criminal proceedings will be pursued […]
Increased heat emissions by a volcano located in the Aleutian were detected via satellite by the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which has issued an eruption advisory alert. Recent activity has increased the volcano to a Yellow Alert. Mt. Cleveland, 5,676 ft. AGL, also referred to as Cleveland volcano is emitting seismic activity that seems to correlate with the […]
Exxon and Koch, two of the biggest oil companies in the business are paying to write state legislation repealing climate change laws. According to tax records and other materials acquired by Bloomberg News, not only Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries are involved in this business, but also numerous other companies which have every interest to […]
Around 200 million years ago, the Earth was still one big continent – the great Pangaea. Around that time came, what’s commonly referred to as, the End-Triassic mass extinction period in which half of all marine life on the planet went extinct. For years, scientists believed that this came as a result of a mass […]
According to a new study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tiny solid and liquid particles in the atmosphere, resulting from human and natural pollution, have kept the Earth from warming at the estimated level. The reduction of global warming effects by stratospheric aerosols has been significant for the past dozen years, […]
Recently, researchers from the Texas A&M University have returned from a trip which had the purpose of estimating the extend of this year’s “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. They have currently measured it to about 3,300 square miles, which is roughly the size of “Rhose Island and Delaware combined”. However, researchers estimate it […]
The northern white-cheeked crested gibbon is running out of places to live in – literally. Perhaps the only habitat they can still find in the whole world is located deep in the wilderness of Vietnam, according to Conservation International. The organization conducted a census, and found that the biggest population by far is located there, […]
Of all the despicable things I thought possible going on around the Amazonian Rainforrest, using an extremely powerful chemical agent on the forest would’ve never crossed not even the darkest region of my conscious. It’s indeed petrifying what the human mind can conjure up for profit. Agent Orange is the chemical in question, and is […]
In the past decade, it seems that greenhouse has emissions have remained constant each year, despite no important improvements were made – on the contrary CO2 levels have increased dramatically. The reason, reports a team of academicians who sought to explain the bafflement, after tweaking a statistical model to include sulfur emissions, is that coal […]
There isn’t any news for anyone, I hope, that the Earth is on the heater right now, and as time passes and gas emissions in the atmosphere rise, you should be thinking about ordering that air conditioning faster. Yes, glaciers are melting, and like I mentioned before scientists have projected an increase in sea levels […]
