Climate Change

A Prize For Water From The Air

December 7, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The XPrize competitions provide monetary incentives to crowdsource solutions to the world’s grand challenges. Originally started in 1994 to spur the development of private spaceflight, the XPrize program now offers prizes for diverse fields including Oceans, Learning, Health, Energy, Environment, Transportation, Safety and Robotics.

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The Global Vertebrate Population Is Struggling

December 6, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new report by the World Wildlife Fund, the planet’s populations of vertebrates have dropped an average of 60% since 1970.

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Bring The Wild Back Into Farmlands

December 4, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A recent study published in Science looks at the effects of maintaining at least a little bit of the wild on working lands including farmland, rangeland and forests. The study concludes that doing so may be a key to preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change.

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Powering Africa With The Sun

December 3, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are roughly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who currently live without electric power. Putting in the infrastructure to supply power to these people in their various countries has been a major economic and logistical challenge.

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More Power From The Sun’s Heat

November 29, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

When we think of solar power, we usually are talking about the panels that generate electricity using the photovoltaic effect. These panels are on millions of rooftops around the world and in utility-scale solar farms. There are also solar water heating systems that use the sun’s heat to provide hot water for homes and businesses.

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Bad News For Beer

November 28, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As extreme weather events become increasingly common, arctic ice disappears, and wildfires burn for weeks on end, many people wonder just what it will take to change some of the entrenched opinions about climate change.

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Microplastics And Humans

November 27, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Microplastics are everywhere. The tiny plastic particles pose a massive environmental challenge. Microplastics are polluting oceans at an alarming rate. Much of the oceanic microplastics result from the breakdown of plastic litter. Another source of microplastics pollution is microbeads. Microbeads, which are commonly added to cleansing and exfoliating personal care products, pollute the environment when they get flushed down the drain.

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Greenland Turning Pink

November 20, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A burgeoning ecosystem of algae is turning parts of the Greenland ice sheet pinkish-red. It isn’t just colorful. It is contributing more than a little to the melting of one of the biggest frozen bodies of water in the world.

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Shifting Climate Zones

November 16, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the climate warms, the planet’s landscape is changing. The Arctic ice is shrinking, the ocean is rising altering coastlines, and plants, animals and diseases are on the move. The world’s climate zones are changing in significant and measurable ways.

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Fumes From Gas Stations

November 15, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A study by environmental health scientists at Columbia University examined the release of vapors from gas station vent pipes and found that emissions were 10 times higher than the estimates used to establish setback regulations that determine how close schools, playgrounds, and parks can be to the facilities.

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Turning Plastic Waste Into Green Energy

November 14, 2018 By EarthWise 1 Comment

**In the Back to the Future movies, the DeLorean time machine ran on garbage. We aren’t any closer to building time machines, but it might soon be practical to produce fuel from garbage.**

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Cloudbursts And New York City

November 13, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Cloudbursts are intense rainstorms that drop enormous amounts of water over a short period of time. Climate change is expected to make cloudbursts occur more frequently. Cities around the world are looking for better ways to cope with weather phenomena like cloudbursts.

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Capturing CO2 From The Air

November 9, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It is increasingly clear that the rate at which carbon dioxide emissions are being reduced is not sufficient to prevent dire consequences of climate change. It appears that it will be necessary to try to actually remove carbon dioxide from the air. Such actions are termed “negative emissions.”

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Environmental Impact of Wind Power

November 8, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A recent study by Harvard University researchers published in two papers looked at the environmental impact of installing sufficient wind power to meet all the energy needs of the US. While doing so would be far better for the environment than burning coal, it would not have negligible impacts.

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Electric Buses On The Rise

November 2, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electric buses are replacing conventional diesel-fueled buses at an accelerating rate that is outpacing the adoption of battery-powered cars. According to forecasts by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, by 2030 some 28% of car sales will be electric vehicles while 84% of new buses will be electric buses. So far, some 12 years away, the actual adoption of electric buses is outpacing this optimistic projection.

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Mammals Can’t Seem To Evolve Fast Enough

November 1, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Our planet has been through five upheavals over the past 450 million years. During each one, the environment on earth changed so dramatically that most plant and animal species became extinct. After each of these mass extinction events, evolution slowly filled the gaps in the environment with new species.

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Throwing Off Nature’s Seasonal Clock

October 29, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Ecosystems throughout the Arctic are regulated by seasonal changes leading to a finely tuned balance between the greening of vegetation and the reproduction of animals. The rapidly warming climate and the disappearing sea ice are upending that balance.

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Glacial Engineering

October 24, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the world struggles with trying to limit carbon emissions and slow the pace of global warming, there is increasing analysis of various forms of geoengineering. Often, these consist of nearly unthinkable efforts to intervene in the climate on a global scale with unpredictable and possibly catastrophic consequences.

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Legos And Plastics

October 23, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Globally, consumers are voicing concerns about the impact of plastic waste on the planet. Conscious of these consumer concerns, many companies are trying to switch to recyclable or less-polluting packaging. Some are even ditching plastics all together.

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Airports and Rising Seas

October 18, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are many low-lying coastal airports around the world. These airports are increasingly vulnerable to the rising sea levels and the more extreme weather brought about by climate change.

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