gear Push settings
GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump met with the The Washington Post’s editorial board on Monday. For a full hour he spilled all sorts of non-nonsensical gibberish in his typical fashion: dodging questions and roll-out.
On the heels of the warmest winter on record, a Gallup poll found a record number of Americans perceive global warming as a serious threat. It doesn't sound like a coincidence.
About 55.8 million years, the rate of carbon emissions grew abruptly, leading to a period of massive warming. But today's rate of emissions is ten times higher.
The European Meteorological Satellite Organization (EUMETSAT) in collaboration with the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a time-lapse 4K video of the weather of 2015 -- and it's awesome.
It's easy to understand why climate change deniers want to cut NASA's climate research funding - because it keeps proving them wrong.
Making bottles to meet America’s demand for bottled water uses more than 17 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year. Instead of petroleum, Stanford researchers have found a creative way to make plastic for bottles sourced from CO2 and inedible plants like waste agriculture or grasses.
A new paper suggests that we've been overlooking how two key human responses to climate -- the total area farmed and the number of crops planted -- will impact food production in the future.
This week Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio won his very first Academy award for best actor. Of course, he was there and took the stage for his acceptance speech. What happened next didn't surprise those familiar with DiCaprio's concerns outside the movie business: he spoke about the imminent threat of climate change, calling it ‘the most existential crisis our civilization has ever known.’
DiCaprio took to the stage to present his acceptance speech, and tackled climate change in front of millions of people watching the Academy Awards, calling it 'the most existential crisis our civilisation has ever known.'
A study ten years in the making found that sea levels are rising at the fastest rate in the last 2,800 years. The researchers say that greenhouse gas emissions that build up in the atmosphere and heat the planet, melting glaciers and ice sheets, are to blame for this sharp rise.
According to a 2009 report, around "60 percent of Americans live in areas where air pollution has reached unhealthy levels that can make people sick"
The saddening story of global warming continues in 2016 like it did in 2015. According to NASA, this January was the warmest January on record, in more than 150 years.
Today, sea levels rise at a rate double that recorded in the 20th century. That's a lot, but not nearly as much as climate scientists expected. Researchers at NASA claim they now know why: thirsty continents absorb a great deal of the extra water coming from melting glaciers. They warn, however, that the system will become saturated at one point and the water will be returned to the oceans, as part of the global water cycle.
One landmark study suggests that the tundras are shifting their role as a result of climate change turning into carbon sources, with a net positive release of carbon into the atmosphere.
While around 97% of active climate change researchers (the most qualified) agree that global warming is real and caused by humans, the same can't be said about the general populace. One study surveyed 1,500 middle school and high school teachers across all 50 states and found only 67 percent agreed that "global warming is caused mostly by human activities," which is strikingly similar to how the average American feels. You'd think school teachers should know better, though.
A new study analyzes how much Arctic ice can melt before its grounded portion also starts sliding into the ocean.
A period of significant cooling from 536 to 660 AD brought forth massive societal changes in Europe and Asia, a new study found. The cooling, caused by volcanic activity, coincided with a massive plague, the decline of the Byzantine Empire and the spread of Slavic and Arabic people. It is well known that volcanic activity can […]
Some 50 million years ago, the world was in dire straits. Atmospheric CO2 levels were at over 1000 ppm, with some putting the level at 3500 ppm. Turtles and palm trees were thriving at the poles and sea levels were much higher than they were now as there was virtually no snow to be seen. […]
The moon does more than cause tides and delight lovers - according to a new study, it can also affect how much rainfall falls down on the ground.
Get it together, world – the top 10 greenest countries in the world are all European! The greenest countries The 2016 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is a Yale-developed method to quantify the environmental performance of a state; it’s a measure of how ‘green’ a country is. Of course, like any index it has its pros […]
Right now coal accounts for 39% of all the world's generated electricity, with gas coming in second but still trailing behind at 22%. King coal is dying though, as ZME Science reported earlier. In less than 15 years, the International Energy Agency estimates renewable energy will become the dominant energy source in the world. Moreover, these estimates are conservative since the report assumes many coal plants will still be online in 2030, which is unlikely.
Before WWII, there weren't that many plastics around. Today, we use so much that we could literally plaster the planet in one giant clingfilm. A paper published in the journal Anthropocene reviews the state of plastic production, use and pollution and concludes that no place on Earth has been spared.
When the researchers analyzed some of the most cited contrarian climate change papers -- by other scientists or in the media -- they found these were riddled with methodological errors and not one one of them stood to scrutiny.
After they studied how much man-made heat got sucked by the world's oceans in the past 150 years, researchers found the heat content doubled since 1997. In other words, the oceans absorbed just as much heat in the past 20 years or so as they did in the prior 130 years. There's more bad news. The rate at which oceans soaked the heat rose sharply since the 2000s and hasn't faltered since. This can only mean a re-doubling that comes with unforeseeable consequences in the coming decades.
The very hot winter of 2015 is having some unexpected consequences: squirrels are getting fat. The winter season for overindulgence has come and passed, but for these little critters in North America and Europe, it left behind a big mark. The mild climate of this winter meant that trees had lots of seeds and nuts, […]
Archaeologists working at NOAA made a surprising discovery - they found the remains of a century-and-a-half old whaling ship
Throughout our hunter-forager days, humans have developed a subconscious urge to over-eat and became less and less psychologically equipped to avoid obesity, especially during the winter months, a University of Exeter study recently found.
Everybody has to eat, but for all their efforts farmers can easily lose a year's worth of crops due to a dry season or some other freak weather event.
There’s almost no need to say it again – it’s been an exceptionally warm December, and an exceptionally warm year. In fact, it’s been the hottest year on record, with 7 of 11 months so far breaking the record. Things aren’t very different in the capital of the US, where temperatures have exceeded 50 degrees […]
Almost all of Costa Rica’s energy came from renewable sources in 2015, making it one of the few countries to achieve virtual independence from fossil fuels. The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) announced that the country achieved “99 percent renewable electricity generation” this year, running 100% renewable in 285 days so far. The bulk of the […]
2015 is set to be the hottest year on record as November smashed previous records, being 1.75 degrees Fahrenheit (0.97 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average. As if that wasn’t enough, 7 of the first 11 months of the year broke the record, according to reports by both NOAA and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. […]
Somewhere in the Arctic, in the interior of the Greenland ice sheets, there lies a glacier like no other. This glacier quakes once every minute, more frequently than ever observed. Geologists now believe that studying these ice quakes could help them better understand how ice melts and reacts to rising temperatures and better model ice flow. […]
Developing countries need an astonishing amount of cash to respect the commitments made at COP21, Paris. This money needs to come from developed nations.
A crucial date, or another point in a long line of failures? History will certainly judge the Paris Climate Agreement, but until then, reactions to it have generally been positive. It’s a monumental achievement, if only for being unanimously supported. I found remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry to be highly relevant: “For […]
The agreement in Paris is not a cure for the world’s environmental problems, but it’s definitely more than a band-aid. It provides a framework on which to build future global and national efforts, but one word came close to ruining everything. Visibly exhausted, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius cracked a smile – probably the first […]
After two weeks of marathon negotiations, hundreds of presentations and dozens of press conferences, 195 countries unanimously approved an acord that will ultimately eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels, limiting global warming to 2ºC, with an incremental goal of 1.5ºC. For better or for worse, it’s the first global climate accord after two decades of […]
With only hours remaining on the COP21 negotiations, there’s a good chance the draft we got to see yesterday will be final – with some small tweaks perhaps. Opinions have been mixed, but mostly negative about this particular draft; sure, it’s important that we get a final draft on which all parties agree, but it’s […]
If we want to tackle climate change, we have to fight it from all sides; one of the things I liked about the COP21 climate summit was that people from all around the world came to present their ideas for fighting climate change locally, with tailored solutions. The UN recently highlighted the projects in the Change […]
If we want to limit our emissions to an acceptable limit, then all aspects of human society have to come together – environmental, social, economic, and not least, technology. With this in mind, six projects were presented at COP21, highlighted as this year’s UN Momentum for Change ICT solutions winners. These are the winning projects: Fairphone […]
After hundreds of hours of negotiations and discourse, it seems that the parties involved are finally settled and can agree to a new draft for a binding climate agreement. But with one day left to go, is that enough – can we call it a success? The pact is a top-bottom approach; it’s an international agreement […]
You know something is down when the most important climate change event in history is sponsored by fossil fuel companies.
A very ambitious initiative could make Africa the cleanest continent – Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) an African-led plan to add 10,000 MW of additional renewable energy on the continent by 2020, has received over $10 billion in funding from international sources at COP21. The mega-scale initiative wants to develop all sectors of African renewable energy by […]
Emissions flatlined in 2014 -- the first time in 15 years. There is still hope!
Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment claim that plants aren't keeping up with CO2 levels.
With only three days left from the Paris Climate Summit, the time for populist talks has passed, and we're expecting concrete solutions.
An undercover investigation exposed how fossil fuel companies pay off academics to publish research sowing doubt about climate change and promote corporate interests.
While the climate talks in Paris are carrying on in full force, it’s important to keep in mind that most of climate change isn’t actually affecting the ones causing it. The polar regions, the south Pacific and small islands are the ones suffering the most. The governments of Nunavut (Canada) and Greenland (Denmark) and the Inuit […]
“I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change” – this is how a post on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Facebook page opened up yesterday, one day before his talk at the COP21 climate summit. Fighting for climate We don’t have the time to debate and convince everyone, as every day, as 19,000 people die from […]
Elon Musk - involved with cutting-edge tech companies like Tesla, SpaceX and Solar city - told youngsters gathered at an event at the University of Sorbonne, Paris that carbon pricing would accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy.
The climate talks in Paris have so far been surprisingly consistent and on track – right now, we’ve learned that the first draft for a global climate agreement is out! This unprecedented meeting has just yielded its first concrete results, and while there are still many brackets which mean that many things are still debatable, […]
