A look at our changing environment.
According to new analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, global sales of gas-powered cars may well have peaked in 2017, representing a significant milestone in the transition to electric vehicles. Demand for gas cars dropped in 2018 and 2019, and then plummeted in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. While sales are surely […]
The sun is the primary source of energy on the earth. Enough solar energy hits the earth in one hour to meet all of human civilization’s energy needs for an entire year. The two leading forms of renewable energy – photovoltaic solar power and wind power – are ways of making use of the sun’s […]
Plastic pollution in the oceans is a major problem. An estimated 8 million tons of plastic trash enters the ocean every year. Most of it is broken up by sun and waves into microplastics, which are tiny bits that ride currents for hundreds or thousands of miles. All of this debris is harmful to marine […]
A series of heatwaves from coast to coast caused June 2021 to be the hottest June on record in the U.S. The average June temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 72.6 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest June in 127 years of record keeping and breaking the previous record set in 2016 by nearly a […]
In agriculture, double-cropping is the practice of growing two or more crops or commodities on the same piece of land in the same calendar year. In Brazil, grain production has increased more than fourfold between 1980 and 2016. The country now stands as the world’s largest exporter of soybeans and the second largest exporter of […]
A new study by researchers from Washington State University and the University of Quebec at Montreal looked at greenhouse gas emissions from water reservoirs. It is perhaps surprising to think that water reservoirs are a source of greenhouse gas emissions at all, but that much was already known. The new study found that those emissions […]
Mass coral bleaching events are getting increasingly frequent as the oceans continue to warm, endangering coral reefs all over the world. The damage to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been enormous and in 2015, nearly half of Hawaii’s coral reefs were affected by a severe bleaching event. Not all coral bleaching is permanent. Corals can […]
Researchers from the Neiker Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development in Spain have demonstrated that a combination of rapeseed cake and beer bagasse can be used to reduce populations of soil parasites and increase crop yields. Beer bagasse is spent brewers’ grain – the stuff that is left over after the beer is made. […]
A team of researchers at Texas A&M University believes that the next generation of offshore energy could come in the form of a synergistic combination of multiple renewable energy generators installed on a floating offshore platform. Their concept for the ocean renewable energy station comprises wind, wave, ocean current, and solar energy elements that could […]
As the world seeks to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that have been warming the climate, most of the focus has been on the primary contributors to the problem, such as the burning of fossil fuels. But there are many smaller contributors to greenhouse gas emissions that individually play only a minor role but collectively […]
Extinction is a part of life. Plant and animal species disappear all the time. In fact, approximately 98% of all the organisms that have ever existed on planet earth are now extinct. Earth’s so-called ‘normal’ rate of extinction is thought to be somewhere between 0.1 and 1 species per 10,000 species per 100 years. But […]
Every summer, a so-called dead zone forms in the Gulf of Mexico. It is primarily caused by excess nutrient pollution from human activities in urban and agricultural areas throughout the Mississippi River watershed. When these excess nutrients reach the Gulf, they stimulate excess growth of algae, which eventually die and decompose, depleting oxygen as they […]
During the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic, private jet use saw record levels because chartered aircraft were estimated to have 30 times lower risk for covid than flying commercial. By August 2020, while commercial flights were down 60% year-over-year, private jet traffic was actually up. From an environmental perspective, however, flying on a private jet […]
Studies have shown that the wax and pollen in 98% of beehives in the U.S. are contaminated with an average of six pesticides. These substances lower bees’ immunity to devastating varroa mites and other pathogens. By some estimates, pesticides cause beekeepers to lose about a third of their hives every year on average. Researchers at […]
According to a new study recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change, more than one-third of the world’s heat-related deaths each year are attributable to human-induced climate change. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK and the University of Bern in Switzerland analyzed data from 732 locations in […]
Offshore wind is booming in Europe. The expansion of wind energy in the German Bight and Baltic Sea has been especially dramatic. At this point, there are about 8 gigawatts of wind turbines in German waters, the equivalent of about 8 nuclear power plants. But space in this region is limited so that wind farms […]
The proliferation of plastics remains one of the world’s most challenging environmental problems. Plastic pollution can be found in some of the most remote regions of the planet, including atop the world’s tallest mountains and in the deepest depths of the ocean. Even the Galapagos Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, are no […]
As the pace of climate change continues to quicken, many species seem to be unable to keep up and could face extinction as a result. There is a potential strategy for people to help species reach places with more suitable physical and biological conditions. People could carry endangered animals to habitats cut off by mountains, […]
Marine debris is a troubling issue around the world. For most people, it is unsightly and perhaps inconvenient, but for many it is a critical problem that has serious impacts on many aspects of life. This is especially the case for indigenous communities for whom the natural environment around the ocean is central to subsistence, […]
Plants have the ability to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and incorporate it into leaves, fruits, wood, and other plant materials. This beneficial process is mostly temporary, as much of this carbon dioxide from plant matter ends up back in the atmosphere through decomposition, or even burning. Researchers at the Salk Institute have proposed […]