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Scientists uncover the mechanics behind Siberia's explosive craters as warming drives methane release.
If we let greenhouse gases run amok, we will end up paying the price.
Lithium mining is essential for supplying the world with batteries. But there's a dark side to it.
We only found this out by accident.
Warmer, wetter tropical soil increases microbial activity -- which belch out CO2.
They are in the atmosphere and have an influence on the energy balance of the planet
We need to act now, urges a collective of experts.
If this sounds a bit alarming... it should.
We're really good at setting bad standards.
This could be big.
Yikes.
It can make a big difference.
The world enters uncharted territory in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, as concentrations reach record levels, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced.
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.
A "massive methane hotspot" sounds pretty bad... and bad it is - much worse than previously thought. In 2014, NASA reported that the methane hotspot is responsible for producing the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States – more than triple the standard ground-based estimate. But the methane, a potent greenhouse gas, might have even more drastic consequences on the climate of our planet.
Saul Luciano Lliuya is a farmer from Peru whose home in the floodpath of the Palcacocha lake which has been swelling with glacial melt-water for the past few decades. Because Lliuya feels “acutely threatened” by the lake, the farmer is now prepared to take one of Germany's biggest producers of brown coal energy to court and demand compensation. This would make it the first such legal claim in Europe where a company is summoned to pay for its historical role in driving emissions.
Mollusks such as oysters, clams and scallops are highly vulnerable to the increasing acidification of the world's oceans. A new study concluded that the acidification is so intense that the mollusks aren't able to properly produce a hard shell, putting them in peril.
Lawrence Livermore scientists have devised tiny capsules made up of a highly permeable polymer shell and a sodium carbonate solution that actively reacts with and absorbs carbon dioxide (CO2). Sodium carbonate is typically known as the main ingredient in washing soda, a common household item. The capsules are a lot cheaper and more environmentally friendly […]
Princeton University researchers have uncovered a previously unknown and potentially substantial source of methane emissions: abandoned oil and gas wells. After analyzing wells from Pennsylvania, they found that a worrying amount of them leaked significant quantities of the greenhouse gas. A previous Stanford study estimated about 3 million abandoned wells in the United States alone, so if […]
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 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 […]
Since the turn of the industrial revolution, round the 1750’s, the share of methane gas in the atmosphere has nearly doubled. Methane molecules are roughly 26 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat, and thus they’re one of the most dangerous types of emissions. Burning methane, however, is a whole lot better (actually […]
Chemists at University of Toronto report a new greenhouse gas has been added to the roster – perfluorotributylamine, or PFTBA. Like other compounds in its class, PFTBA is a frighting good heat absorbent but nobody was expecting, however, for it to be 7,100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of the effects one molecule […]
The state of climate change was recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change. Among important insights covering global warming, the U.N. panel of scientists have reached an unprecedented consensus stating there’s a 95% probability that all climate change is caused by human activities. The IPCC was established by the United Nations in 1988 to […]
A interesting, yet controversial discussion, among climate scientists is set around the runaway greenhouse effect. Basically, past a certain threshold when the incoming solar energy is greater than the energy a planet can emit back into space, equilibrium is broken and the planet’s atmosphere enters a positive feedback loop. In the case of Earth, when […]
The inevitable 2012 title was ‘Human population reaches 7 billion‘, surpassing anything anyone could have imagined 100 years ago. Now, we’re approaching a very worrying milestone – CO2 levels in the air will reach 400 ppm (parts per million), for the first time in human existence. CO2 levels have risen at a quick, steady pace […]
Greenhouse gas emissions are growing, growing and growing; the level of CO2 emitted by humans grew to 390.9 parts per million (ppm) – 40 percent above the levels in the pre-industrial age. Fossil fuels are the biggest are the biggest contributor to this volume, responsible for 375 billion metric tonnes (413.37 billion tons) of carbon […]
A lot of the climate change models today are based under the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions weren’t that significant pre-1850, when the industrial age boom began. A new study from scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands found otherwise, and reported that human activity was responsible for plenty of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere […]
While there are still a lot of climate change skeptics out there that argue that the human influence exerted upon Earth’s climate is minimal, if not non-existent, a myriad of research studies tackling the subject would say otherwise. Fossil fuels usage yields the most greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, out of all other human-induced pollutant […]
According to a new report released by the Chinese authorities, global warming “threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods“. China, the world’s second largest economy and biggest polluter understands that “greenhouse gases from industry, transport and shifting land-use poses a long-term threat to China’s prosperity, health […]
There has been a lot of fuss lately about shale gas, which has become increasingly important in the past decade, particularly due to hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), a modern technique used to extract it from the underground. Many have proposed natural shale gas as a supposedly clean bridge fuel, fit to address climate change and […]
