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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 […]
Gas prices have sky rocketed during the past five years, and so far it seems to know only one trend – upwards. As such, fuel efficiency, besides keeping environmental pollution to a minimum, has become a sort of priority for today’s automobile manufacturers. Captioned above is a hypermiling concept car, developed by Cambridge Design Partnership, […]
Climate change and over-fishing are held responsible for the swift collapse of coral reefs and the propagation of mass extinction among marine life. According to the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), which presented the study this Tuesday to the U.N., the Earth is faced with its biggest spate of mass extinctions […]
The river Ganges has literally been at the center of Indian life for thousands of years, both socially and spiritually. Millions of people have been fed, bathed and enlightened by it. It’s a sacred river, regarded as the most important stream in Hindu mythology – it’s also very dirty. The Ganges is considered to be […]
Acording to a report released by the UN on Sunday, a transition to a low carbon, green and ressource efficient economy requires an annual investment of $40 billion anually, which amounts for only 0.034 per cent of global GDP. If the measures included in the report are adopted, the investment would “halve deforestation rates by […]
More and more countries are seeking to ban or at least limit the use of plastic bags or have already done so, and the latest government to go for this smart, eco-friendly move is the Republic of Congo. The African nation has just recently passed a bill in which the production, import, sale and use […]
Global warming is not an abstract element, it’s not harmless, and it doesn’t apply only to polar caps; it affects the entire world, including you and me. Taking a look at food prices Even though mundane things tend to become cheaper and cheaper, food has become more and more expensive in the past few years, […]
It’s a black period for Brazil’s environment, and things will get even worse in days to follow; the government just applied a reform of the forestry code which will make it extremely easy to cut down massively on the rainforests in Brazil. Money money money After several delays and a desperate, but outnumbered resistance, the […]
Due to weeks of continuous heavy rain, coupled with a runoff from an unusually snowy winter, thousands of homes and over 3 million acres of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas have been flooded. In a desperate attempt to save neighboring large cities from the floods, U.S, Army Corps of Engineers are working day and […]
Japan shows us yet again that they are leading the world in terms of renewable energy, in taking a plan that would make solar panels mandatory for all buildings no later than 2030. The plan, expected to be unveiled at the upcoming G8 Summit in France, aims to show Japan’s resolve to encourage technological innovation […]
Late this Monday, the Mississippi crested in at 47.8 feet (14.5 meters), just less than a foot below the city’s record, set in 1937. As the river reaches nearby city neighborhoods and Shelby County suburbs, nature has “put the pin back in the grenade,” said county spokesperson Steve Shular. Floods are really nasty, but for […]
China’s attempts to move towards nuclear and renewable energy is admirable, but the US will be the driving force behind innovations and development, in the field of clean energy – that’s what Bill Gates told a sold out crowd at a Seattle breakfast, where the topic was climate change. “China is very important and can […]
Various animals and plants faced with the danger of extinction may be one step closer to making the official endangered species list, which according to the Endangered Species Act puts them under government protection, as part of a legal settlement plan announced on Tuesday by the government and environmentalists. Under the agreement, species that the […]
In a world where accusations like this fly by like pigeons in the park, it was about time someone but some work into research before making a claim such as this one. This is not some unsubstantiated assertion, or some crazy scientist’s statement – this is backed up by numbers. Let’s look at the matter […]
A while ago, I wrote about Severn Suzuki (video here), a woman who at the age of 12 held a speech at the UN Earth Summit in 1992 that got a standing ovation from the members. As the years passed, she became an active environmentalist, wrote a few books, and even had her own TV […]
Global warming has lowered the global yield of crops with up to 5% since 1980; not for soybeans, or tomatoes, or etc, but for wheat and corn – which are probably the most important crops. A global problem The study, which was published in the journal Science, states that the corn production has gone up […]
It is no longer a question if multi-meter sea level rises will happen, but only of when. According to the latest estimate from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme it seems the accelerated climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of Greenland’s ice could raise world sea levels by up to 1.6 meters by […]
Researchers from Boston College and MIT have managed to develop a new kind of thermo-solar technology by applying a new technique which involves high-performance nanotech materials arrayed on a flat panel – they’re results have proven to be as much as eight times more efficient than current solar thermo electric generators, at little to no […]
First of all, don’t think of alien species as extraterrestrials; if you came here wanting to hear about that – sorry. Thankfully, the sci-fi scenario is not upon us. I’m talking about species which haven’t originated from Antarctica – seeds, fungi, microorganisms, they go wherever they are taken, and wherever people take them. If you […]
When Biosphere 2 was launched in 1991, the idea seemed to be absurd. A few years after that, it suddenly seemed to be a great idea, and the results were eagerly awaited; but the results didn’t came… Biosphere 2: the making The point was to make a terrarium, connect it with some other enclosures, and […]
