A good piece from the Associated Press via Yahoo on the potential of geothermal energy as a fossil fuel replacement. Geothermal energy has the advantage of being clean and abundant. In fact, it’s already used in some homes in northern Europe, where a geothermal well beneath a house contains water that has been heated by […]
Read more...Periodically, the Earth has experienced significant species die-offs. While the so-called K-T extinction, which marked the end of the dinosaur age, has been attributed to an asteroid crash, other declines remain something of a mystery. An article in Science magazine, summarized on its website, recounts a study by researchers from the University of Kansas in […]
Read more...It turns out that those who blame the recent increase in the number of Atlantic hurricanes on global warming aren’t nuts. A study just published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society analyzed storms over the last century. It found that the increase since 1980 was due to climate change, and attributed 50% to […]
Read more...An article in Nature magazine, as reported by the BBC, has found that ozone is a more significant greenhouse gas than previously recognized. Ozone interferes with plant photosynthesis, which reduces their effectiveness as a carbon sink. The study estimated that it reduced plant productivity by 14% to 22%, which is a large enough level to […]
Read more...My Japanese friends have often said that China has a 5,000 year history of not living up to its potential. When I’ve passed that view along to Westerners, they’ve scoffed, viewing the Chinese juggernaut to be unstoppable. The Japanese may yet be proven correct. This post at Gristmill points to an article by Christina Larson […]
Read more...A Canadian study, “Food Web–Specific Biomagnification of Persistent Organic Pollutants,” published in Science Magazine, identifies a new class of chemicals that pose a potential threat to human health. This conclusion results from a more fundamental insight: the traditional method of looking at bioaccumulation did so by studying marine life. However, air-breathing creatures discharge toxins differently […]
Read more...The Journal has a not-too-bad page one story on Australia’s drought and the government efforts to address it, but it’s wrong enough so as to merit comment. I lived in Australia for a couple of years not too long ago and have met Malcolm Turnbull, who is now the environmental minister for Australia. The story […]
Read more...The headline in Mark Thoma’s blog is more colorful: “To Reduce Crime, Get the Lead Out.” His post points to a Washington Post story, “Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity,” in which economist Rick Nevin says lead exposure is the biggest factor behind crime. Now as any statistician will tell you, correlation is not causation, […]
Read more...Most news stories touting the findings of a ten year investigation of organic versus conventionally farmed tomatoes make broader claims (example; CNNMoney “All-natural veggies good for heart“) than the study’s immediate findings, namely that the fruit, when raised organically, has nearly double the level of some key flavinoids (quercetin and kaempferol. Flavinoids have been found […]
Read more...A good post by Joseph Romm at Gristmill explains why planting trees isn’t as good a CO2 reduction measure as it is commonly believed. However, I take issue with his title: “The first rule of carbon offsets: No trees.” Actually, the first rule of carbon offsets is do something else, anything else, first. While in […]
Read more...The BBC website has this grim story on how climate change and unsustainable farming practices is projected to produce an increase in deserts, leading to mass migration. Sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia are worse affected, but parts of Australia and the American West are also drying out. From the BBC: Tens of millions of people […]
Read more...Six highly respected climate scientists have published a paper, “Climate change and trade gasses,” in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (hat tip Gristmill) that says things are worse than is being reported. The paper takes issue with some of the assumptions of the IPCC report, arguing that it ignores that ice sheets melt […]
Read more...Researchers have found that spring is arriving in the polar regions considerably earlier, and they anticipate that the long-term effect will be that species from warmer climates will establish themselves further north, competing with and in some cases crowding out now-native flora and fauna. From the BBC: Spring in the Arctic is arriving “weeks earlier” […]
Read more...I figure readers would like to hear good news now and again. From PhysOrg: In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, three cubs are seen near their mother at the Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin, capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. (AP) — Eighty-four Siberian tigers, among the world’s rarest animals, have been […]
Read more...The sudden disappearance of bees from many colonies is arguably the most underreported environmental story. Varroa mites have devastated the feral bee population, and as a result, one-third of the crops in the US depend on commercial beekeeping operations (meaning bees are brought in to a farm solely for the purpose of fertilizing its crops). […]
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