Enlarge / Deforestation in Amazon to create grazing for cattle. (credit: LeoFFreitas | Getty Images) The Amazon rainforest is losing its ability to recover from destruction, and parts of it are approaching “a catastrophic tipping point”, warns a leading scientist after a new study using two decades of satellite data. The research found that in […]
Enlarge / Storm surge barriers, like these in the Netherlands, can play a role in adaptation. (credit: Mischa Keijser ) Last Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new report that followed August’s initial portion of this massive, three-part effort. Much of the immediate news coverage has focused on the latest attempts to […]
Enlarge (credit: Pramote Polyamate) Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center announced the results of polling that asked the US public its thoughts on how to address climate change. While the usual partisan split was apparent, the survey highlights an even larger challenge that policymakers will face: the US public supports contradictory things when it comes […]
Enlarge (credit: John Paraskevas/Newsday RM) For over a decade, the US has blended ethanol with gasoline in an attempt to reduce the overall carbon pollution produced by fossil fuel-powered cars and trucks. But a new study says that the practice may not be achieving its goals. In fact, burning ethanol made from corn—the major source […]
Enlarge / Could this guy’s mental abilities be staving off some of the impact of climate change? (credit: Andrew Howe ) Many bird species are slowly but surely getting smaller. One study from 2019 looked at more than 70, 000 North American migratory birds across 52 species that met untimely ends by flying into Chicago […]
Enlarge / Vapor rises from the cooling towers of the nuclear plant of Dampierre-en-Burly near Orleans, central Italy, on October 23, 2018. (credit: GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP/Getty Images ) France is planning to build up to 14 nuclear reactors in an attempt to shore up the country’s aging nuclear fleet while also reducing the country’s carbon emissions. […]
Enlarge / The white areas on the walls near Lake Mead provide an indication of how much its waters have dropped. (credit: Lingqi Xie ) About half of the contiguous US is currently experiencing moderate to extreme drought—including almost all of the West. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, as widely pervasive drought has been […]
Enlarge / A US Bradley Fighting Vehicle drives during a joint military exercise between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group, in the countryside of Deir Ezzor in northeastern Syria on December 7, 2021. The US Army is currently testing a version of the Bradley with […]
Enlarge / An Electrify America charging station. (credit: Charge America) About five years from now, a common complaint about electric vehicles—range anxiety—will be a thing of the past across much of the US. Starting this year, the federal government will begin doling out $5 billion to states over five years to build a nationwide network […]
Enlarge (credit: Natalie Fobes | Getty Images) Charles Darwin thought of evolution as an incremental process, like the patient creep of glaciers or the march of continental plates. “We see nothing of these slow changes in progress until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages,” he wrote in On the Origin […]