Dubai to build world's largest waste-to-energy plant

What do you do when you have too much garbage but not enough energy? Convert one into the other. That’s the thinking behind the waste-to-energy plants that are beginning to pop up around the globe, and now the Government of Dubai has announced plans to build the world’s largest.

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State of the Union: What Trump won't say about climate change

The state of the climate is not strong. That was the unmistakable takeaway over the last year for scientists who study Earth's atmosphere. They watched as the planet's temperature rose to near-record levels, and as hurricanes and fires caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. They published research more conclusively linking extreme storms to climate change, and found new evidence suggesting sea levels could rise faster and more dramatically than expected.

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Forget Ebola, Sars and Zika: ticks are the next global health threat

Ticks carry a wide array of pathogens – and environmental changes mean they are spreading

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Regulator Wants 80 Percent Clean Energy In Arizona By 2050

A state regulator wants the majority of Arizona’s electricity to come from clean energy sources by 2050.On Tuesday, Arizona Corporation Commissioner Andy Tobin released a plan that would give Arizona one of the most aggressive renewable energy goals in the country: 80 percent by 2050. The state’s current target is 15 percent by 2025.The proposal encourages more battery storage, biomas-related fuels, energy efficiency and new infrastructure for electric vehicles. It also aims to better align Arizona’s renewable energy mix with demand.

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Death by Dining: An Unbalanced Day’s Breakfast

“Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments” – Bethenny Frankel. By Aaron Dabbah.

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Volcanic Mudflows Sweep away Roads

Rainfall near the erupting Mount Mayon has caused strong mudflows

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Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals

Killer whales able to copy words such as “hello” and “bye bye” as well as sounds from other orcas, study shows

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'Vegans call me murderer and rapist'

Veganism has been described as the fastest growing lifestyle movement. For some concern about animal welfare leads them to actively campaign against all forms of the meat industry. But are some of those activists taking it too far? "When you're being called murderers and rapists, that is overstepping the mark, for fairly obvious reasons," says Alison Waugh, a trainee farmer in Northumberland. She has received death threats due to her work and told the Victoria Derbyshire programme other farmers are feeling threatened.

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Japan scrapped proposed Fukushima tsunami simulation nine years before disaster

The government had proposed to Tepco that a simulation of tsunami striking Fukushima Prefecture be conducted nine years before the 2011 catastrophe but decided not to after the company objected, according to a court document.

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Who Killed the Nazi Botanist Trying to Wipe Out Cocaine?

A former SS scientist may have been set to destroy the Bolivian coca crop with his secret bioweapon - until he got whacked. By Mat Youkee.

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This Fruit Tastes Like Custard

Fans of Central America's olosapo also compare it to butterscotch.

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These drones can plant 100,000 trees a day

Drones could fight deforestation by planting 1 billion trees a year.

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A ski jacket that actively gets rid of sweat

To keep the body warm and dry during winter sports, high-performance clothing is a must. The demands on these textiles are high, as a person sweats up to one liter per hour on his upper body alone when skiing. A new technology, co-developed by a team of Empa scientists, helps athletes sweating by actively transporting moisture away from the body and to the outside. This is possible because ultra-thin layers of gold in the fabric are electrified.

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The Hot Mess Of The Free Market’s Side Effects

How every little thing affects every other thing… By Rob Larson.

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Meet the Terror Bird, a Bone-Smashing Beast That Once Roamed the Americas

The prehistoric avians weren't able to fly, but they were able to kill.

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China’s latest energy megaproject shows that coal really is on the way out

China has some of the worst air pollution in the world. In several cities, thick layers of smog are common, resulting in thousands of deaths every year. According to a 2016 study, the top contributor of air pollution-related deaths in China is the burning of coal. The team of Chinese and American researchers behind the study said that pollution from coal caused 366,000 premature deaths in 2013.

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$165 million donation from 2 tech billionaires will permanently protect over 24,000 acres of California coastline

Thanks to a $165 million donation from two tech billionaires, over 24,000 acres of pristine California coastline will be permanently protected in the years to come. The multi-million dollar contribution from Jack and Laura Dangermond, which was given to The Nature Conservancy (TNC), is the single largest philanthropic donation in the organization’s history.

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France will invest a total of 2 billion euros in renewable energy in Africa

France will invest a total of 2 billion euros in renewable energy in Africa in 2016-20, a 50% increase in comparison with the last five years. French President François Hollande made the announcement alongside UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Défi climatique, solutions africaines (Climate Challenge, African Solutions) summit on Tuesday at the COP 21 climate change conference in Paris. Programmes will encourage the use of solar energy, wind power, hydroelectricity or geothermal energy, depending on the potential of each country.

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Donald Trump fails to grasp basic climate change facts during Piers Morgan interview

Donald Trump has expressed doubts over the existence of climate change, as it is understood by the vast majority of scientists. After proclaiming his belief in “clean air and clean water”, the US President questioned some of the central tenets of climate science in an interview with Piers Morgan.

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State of the climate: how the world warmed in 2017 | Carbon Brief

The climate data for 2017 is now in. In this article, Carbon Brief explains why last year proved to be so remarkable across the oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature of the planet.

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Chemical sunshade to slow warming may not be feasible: U.N. draft

The idea of spraying a haze of sun-dimming chemicals high above the Earth as a quick way to slow global warming faces so many obstacles that it may not be feasible, a leaked draft U.N. report says. By Alister Doyle.

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Australian raptors start fires to flush out prey

In the first recorded instance of fire being used by animals other than humans, three Australian birds of prey species have been seen carrying burning twigs to set new blazes. John Pickrell reports. 

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Hunting for the ancient lost farms of North America

2,000 years ago, people domesticated these plants. Now they’re wild weeds. What happened? By Annalee Newitz.

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The Dinner Party That Served Up 50,000-Year-Old Bison Stew

When life gives you frozen bison, make dinner.

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Wreck found by reporter may be last American slave ship, archaeologists say

Relying on historical records and accounts from old timers, AL.com may have located the long-lost wreck of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to bring human cargo to the United States.

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Floods, Record Warmth, High Winds: It’s the Winter of 2018

When it comes to extreme weather, Europe—typically more placid than North America—has been giving its western counterpart a run for its money over the past month.

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Week in pictures: 20 - 26 January 2018

A selection of the best news photographs from around the world, taken over the past week.

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Scotland to ban use of electric shock dog collars

The Scottish government has announced a ban on the use of electric shock collars on dogs. Environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham released a statement on Thursday 24 January confirming the decision. The move follows a campaign backed by Scottish Conservative MSP Maurice Golden and organisations including the Kennel Club, the Animal Behaviour and Training Council, and the Scottish SPCA.

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Naked mole rats defy the biological law of aging

New study suggests that death rates don't rise with age, as they do for most animals

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Map Of Shakespeare's Play Locations

Shakespeare set his plays in many countries - from Wales to current-day Syria. The interactive map below shows all of the locations that Shakespeare used in his 37 plays.

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Paris zoo evacuated after 52 baboons escape enclosure

Fifty-two baboons escaped on Friday from their enclosure at the Paris zoological park in Vincennes, on the southeastern outskirts of the French capital, according to reports. The zoo has been evacuated, police have arrived and three marksmen armed with hypodermic guns are at the scene. The latest reports suggest that all but four have now returned to their enclosure after being caught "in a net", according to police sources.

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Can Free Public Transit Fix South Korea's Nasty Smog Problem?

When it comes to air pollution, China gets most of the attention as one of Asia’s worst offenders (and rightly so). But South Korea has a massive pollution problem all its own, earning the unenviable title of worst air quality among OECD nations—and experts predict the problem will only get worse over the next five years. So when a thick layer of yellow dust settled over the city last week, local leaders took a drastic step to confront it: declaring an air quality emergency and, for the first time ever, giving commuters free rides on public transit.

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Pangea Supercontinent With Modern Countries Labeled

This is a map of the Pangea supercontinent created by digital artist Massimo Pietrobon with all the modern countries labeled.

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Can Planet Earth Feed 10 Billion People?

Humanity has 30 years to find out.

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Swatting Mosquitos Will Actually Prevent Bites

Biologists from the University of Washington have discovered that the act of swatting at mosquitoes may actually deter them from biting you, and the degree

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Plastic Pollution Is Killing Coral Reefs, 4-Year Study Finds

Millions of tons of plastic waste end up in the ocean every year. And the trash stays there: Whether it's grocery bags or water bottles or kids' toys, plastic is practically indestructible. Now marine scientists have discovered that it's killing coral reefs. A new study based on four years of diving on 159 reefs in the Pacific shows that reefs in four countries — Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar — are heavily contaminated with plastic. It clings to the coral, especially branching coral. And where it clings, it sickens or kills.

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Cow breaks free from pen to live among wild bison in Poland

A farmyard cow in Poland has chosen freedom this winter, roaming with a herd of bison for three months after escaping its pen. The reddish-brown cow has been spotted following bison across corn and canola fields bordering the Bialowieza Forest in eastern Poland as they forage for abandoned corn cobs and other food.

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10 easy ways you can tell for yourself that the Earth is not flat

Humanity has known Earth is round for a few millenia, and I’ve been meaning to show more methods that prove the world is not flat. I’ve had a few ideas on how to do that, but recently got an interesting incentive, when Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer, wrote about a recently published BBC article about “The Flat Earth” society.

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Decoding the Axolotl genome

A team of researchers led by scientists in Vienna, Dresden and Heidelberg has decoded the entire genetic information of the Mexican salamander axolotl. The axolotl genome, which is the largest genome ever to be sequenced, will be a powerful tool to study the molecular basis for re-growing limbs and other forms of regeneration.

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In an Israeli Cave, Scientists Discover Jawbone of Earliest Modern Human Out of Africa

The discovery could rewrite the migration story of our species, pushing back by about 50,000 years when Homo sapiens were thought to have first left Africa.

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The butterfly hunter

Margaret Cox searches for butterflies, but there's no joy if she finds them. They are the by-product of what she terms a "geophysical anomaly". We know it by its common name: a mass grave.

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Paris on flooding alert as rising Seine causes travel disruption

Parisians have been warned to stay away from the river Seine as it continues to rise, flooding surrounding roads and causing disruption to the city’s transport network. As water levels increased on Wednesday, the capital’s authorities said the river could pass the 6.10-metre (20ft) level of 2016, the highest in over a century and more than four metres above its normal height.

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Seine River Bursts Banks in Paris

Metro lines and stations have been closed after France's wettest January for more than 100 years.

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Is There A Ticking Time Bomb Under The Arctic?

Just what exactly is permafrost? And what is happening now that it's warming up? To find out, we enter the Arctic Circle's secret world of ice and frozen history.

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Nobody Knows Why These Bees Built a Spiral Nest

This Australian stingless bee builds spiral towers of its unborn young. That may be the least weird thing about it.

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In the Arctic, More Rain May Mean Fewer Musk Oxen

Winter rain makes it more difficult for the animals to feed, particularly pregnant females, researchers find.

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Tesla’s giant battery in Australia made around $1 million in just a few days

Tesla’s 100MW/ 129MWh Powerpack project in South Australia, the largest in the world for now, has been demonstrating its capacity over the last few weeks since going into operation last month. But now the system is showing its potential to be highly profitable by making an estimated $1 million AUD (~$800,000 USD) in just a few days. The Powerpack system built by Tesla and operated by Neoen as part of their nearby wind farm is used on two different levels.

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Wild wolf found in Belgium for first time in more than 100 years

A wild wolf has been found in the northern Belgian region of Flanders for the first time in more than a century, an environmental group said Saturday. The female wolf known as Naya came from eastern Germany after being fitted with a tracking device in Dresden. "Our country was the only one in continental Europe to have not been visited by a wolf," since the animal began recolonising the continent, Landschap said.

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A Wet and Warm Spring, Then 200,000 Dead Saigas

Scientists identified bacteria that caused a mass die-off of the endangered antelopes in Kazakhstan in 2015. But the mechanism that made the bacteria so deadly is not understood.

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Plants to uncover landmines. (2004)

A genetically engineered plant that detects landmines in soil by changing colour could prevent thousands of deaths and injuries by signalling where explosives are concealed.

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