We Cannot Fight Climate Change With Capitalism, Says Report

As access to cheap, plentiful energy dries up and the effects of climate change take hold, we are entering a new era of profound challenge ― and free market capitalism cannot dig us out. This is the conclusion of a report produced for the United Nations by Bios, an independent research institute based in Finland.

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Robot reef protector sees a new way to check Great Barrier Reef health

An underwater drone that can keep watch on reef health and accurately identify and inject the devastating crown-of-thorns starfish is ready to be put to the test on the Great Barrier Reef, as a result of a collaboration between QUT, Google and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

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France's ban on bee-killing pesticides begins Saturday

A ban on five neonicotinoid pesticides enters into force in France on Saturday, placing the country at the forefront of a campaign against chemicals blamed for decimating critical populations of crop-pollinating bees. The move has been hailed by beekeepers and environmental activists, but lamented by cereal and sugar beet farmers who claim there are no effective alternatives for protecting their valuable crops against insects.

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Deadline for climate action – Act strongly before 2035 to keep warming below 2°C

If governments don’t act decisively by 2035 to fight climate change, humanity could cross a point of no return after which limiting global warming below 2°C in 2100 will be unlikely, according to a new study by scientists in the UK and the Netherlands. The research also shows the deadline to limit warming to 1.5°C has already passed, unless radical climate action is taken. The study is published today in the European Geosciences Union journal Earth System Dynamics.

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Silver Coins Lead to One of the Earliest Roman Sites in Yorkshire

The dig site found by metal detectorists 3 years ago appears to be a high-status homestead that once had two villas

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Do Animals Experience Grief?

A growing body of evidence points to how animals are aware of death and will sometimes mourn for or ritualize their dead

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Should Rivers Have Rights? A Growing Movement Says It’s About Time

Inspired by indigenous views of nature, a movement to grant a form of legal “personhood” to rivers is gaining some ground — a key step, advocates say, in reversing centuries of damage inflicted upon the world’s waterways.

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This Adorable Sea Slug is a Sneaky Little Thief

Nudibranchs may look cute, squishy and defenseless ... but watch out. These brightly-colored sea slugs aren't above stealing weapons from their prey.

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Rare insects stolen from Northeast Philadelphia insectarium

Many rare and valuable insects have been reported missing from the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion. "We found that the majority 80 to 90 percent of the creatures that we had in the museum were taken," says Insectarium CEO John Cambridge. "Any types of exotic tarantula, scorpions, millipedes. We specialize in the arthropods of the world and we use those to tell the story of biodiversity, etc." Both Cambridge and Philadelphia police believe it was an inside job. Cambridge has three former employees of the Northeast Philadelphia facility that he suspects played a role in the robbery.

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Goats Like It When You Smile at Them, Extremely Heartwarming Study Says

Empirical observation told us years ago that goats were slowly becoming the new dog, and according to a new study, they are truly qualified to be man’s best friend. On Wednesday, the Royal Society released heartwarming research showing that just like humans, goats have no desire to interact with people who come off as angry or upset, and that they’re much more attracted to those with big smiles plastered across their faces.

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Why Are Puffins Vanishing? The Hunt for Clues Goes Deep (Into Their Burrows)

Overfishing, hunting and pollution are putting pressure on the birds, but climate change may prove to be the biggest challenge.

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Recent Study Found Plant-Based Diet Decreases Environmental Impact By 42 to 84 Percent!

As the environmental, animal welfare, and human health concerns involved with eating meat, dairy, and eggs have come to light in recent years, many Americans have begun embracing a plant-based diet. However, some are still skeptical as to whether swapping out meat and dairy for plants actually does THAT much to help our Earth. They wonder, does following a plant-based diet significantly reduce environmental impact as compared to eating in the traditional, meat-centric American way?

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Swarm of 20,000 bees attack New York City hotdog stand

Productivity came to a halt across New York City offices on Tuesday afternoon, as hordes of people eagerly followed the removal of 20,000 bees from a hotdog stand. The bees had swarmed the hotdog stand, a block south of Times Square, around 1pm. Thousands watched a Reuters livestream – the stand is located outside the news agency’s New York headquarters – and followed on Twitter as a police officer was called in to remove the bees. With a vacuum cleaner.

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California becomes second US state to commit to clean energy

California is following in Hawaii's footsteps by committing to 100 percent clean energy. Lawmakers in the state have passed a bill that will see it moving entirely to clean electricity sources by 2045, CBS reported Tuesday. The vote comes as a report revealed Monday that California could lose up to two-thirds of its beaches and water supply due to climate change. Public polling showed the majority of Californians (about 72 percent) are supportive of the bill, although some business groups and utilities aren't in favour, citing job concerns.

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Scientists discover hidden deep-sea coral reef off South Carolina Coast

If you think Charleston, South Carolina, has plenty of history within its pre-Colonial grounds, just look at what’s been hiding 160 miles off the city’s coast for thousands of years: a giant deep-sea coral reef system. The chief scientist who helped make the discovery called it unbelievable.

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Microrobots: Bigger than they seem

Using insects as templates, researchers are buildings robots that are very small, very mobile—and very useful.

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Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

“There will always be drinking water here. It’s just a question of how much you want to pay for it.”

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The AI that could help make limitless fusion power a reality

An AI is set to try and work out how a potentially limitless supply of energy can be used on Earth. It could finally solve the mysteries of fusion power, letting researchers capture and control the process that powers the sun and stars. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University hope to harness a massive new supercomputer to work out how the doughnut-shaped devices, known as tokamaks, can be used.

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Device aims to repel mosquitos by "bringing a thunderstorm to your wrist"

​While we've seen a number of devices that use ultrasound to ward off mosquitos, many people maintain that such deterrent systems just don't work. The Nopixgo Mosquito Bite Protection Wristband takes a different approach, emitting electromagnetic waves instead.

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Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people nutrient deficient

Crops grown in a high CO2 atmosphere are less nutritious, containing less protein, zinc and iron. Rising levels of carbon dioxide could make crops less nutritious and damage the health of hundreds of millions of people, research has revealed, with those living in some of the world’s poorest regions likely to be hardest hit. Previous research has shown that many food crops become less nutritious when grown under the CO2 levels expected by 2050, with reductions of protein, iron and zinc estimated at 3–17%.

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A new dimension to marine restoration: 3D printing coral reefs

The local fishermen looked on skeptically. From the deck of a small motorboat, scuba divers grabbed odd chunks of ceramic – which could be described as rocky brains stuck on stumpy stilts – and plunged into the aquamarine waters. The dive team assembled the pieces as a few triggerfish circled around to investigate the commotion.

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Extinct Cave Bear DNA Found in Living Bears

After roaming Europe and Asia for more than a hundred thousand years, cave bears died out some 24,000 years ago, after a millennia-long death spiral possibly spurred by hunting, natural climate change, and competition with humans for habitat.

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Critics say cigarette filters, a health and environmental scourge, must go

Cigarette butts have long been the single most collected item on the world’s beaches, with a total of more than 60 million collected over 32 years.

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The Nuclear Power Plant of the Future May Be Floating Near Russia

Offshore reactors could be cheaper, safer and more flexible, proponents say, making them a useful weapon against climate change. Critics are incredulous.

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How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies

Ants, wasps, bees, and other social insects live in highly organized “eusocial” colonies where throngs of females forgo reproduction—usually viewed as the cornerstone of evolutionary fitness—to serve the needs of a few egg-laying queens and their offspring. How they got that way has been hard to explain despite more than 150 years of biologists’ efforts. Many researchers have thought the answer would come down to a complex suite of genetic changes that evolved in species-specific ways over a long time.

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Australian Prime Minister Ousted Over Climate Policy

Conservative lawmaker Scott Morrison has forced out Malcolm Turnbull as Australian prime minister, the third time the country's leader has sunk over climate policy in the past decade, and the seventh since 1997, according to Australia's ABC News. An internal Liberal party row started when Turnbull proposed modest emissions targets for the country's energy sector. He dropped the plans Monday after pressure from the party's right-wing faction, but that led to a narrowly defeated leadership challenge from Peter Dutton on Tuesday, then a final ousting from Morrison on Friday.

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Five recent events stoking climate change fears

The Trump administration this month introduced rules that would roll back Obama-era regulations on vehicle emissions and coal fired plants, raising concerns in the scientific community about how a slower approach to decreasing carbon emissions will affect the world's climate.

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'They are taking out a generation of tuna': overfishing causes crisis in Philippines

Raul Gomez is an old man who fishes with five crew on a clipper in the seas known as the coral triangle, and he has spent two months now without taking enough to feed his family. Riding out storms and searing heat in western Pacific waters, the burly, sun-inked Filipino uses a pole and line to reel in yellowfin tuna the size of an adult human. This has been his trade for 40 years, but it is becoming tougher as fisheries in this region – one of the planet’s most important centres of tuna production – face the prospect of total collapse.

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Plan Bee: The Rise of Alternative Pollinators

Jim Freese grows apples, pears and cherries on 45 acres in the north-central part of this state, on sagebrush-studded land his grandfather bought in 1910. Walking among trees laden with shiny red cherries, Mr. Freese recalled that four years ago his trees were not producing well and his farm was financially struggling. Like many growers, he had been relying on rented honeybees to pollinate his cherry trees every spring, along with wild bees and other insects.

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Oil Companies Want Taxpayer Dollars to Protect Their Facilities Against...Climate Change

And yet, when you dig into it, it's money we should probably spend.

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Shipping companies abandon vessels without restraint in Nigeria

Nigeria's waters have become a dumping ground for shipwrecks and the people living on the coastline say the unserviceable vessels abandoned by local and international shipping companies are making their lives hard. By Sam Olukoya.

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The Super Bowl of Beekeeping

Every February, white petals blanket first the almond trees, then the floor of the central valley, an 18,000-square-mile expanse of California that begins at the stretch of highway known as the Grapevine just south of Bakersfield and reaches north to the foothills of the Cascades. The blooms represent the beginning of the valley’s growing season each year: Almond trees are first to bud, flower and fruit. At the base of the trunks sit splintered boxes — some marked with numbers, some with names, some with insignias — stacked two boxes high on a wooden pallet that fits four stacks.

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Anti-poaching unit nabs 365 poachers in six months

Durban - A specialised unit, set up to fight poaching have made great strides in their bid to stamp out rhino poaching. Over the last six months, a total of 365 rhino poachers have been convicted and an additional 15 men aged between 33 and 50, have been arrested. National police spokesperson, Brigadier Vish Naidoo said the 15 were nabbed following sting operations in Mpumalanga. He said police recovered four unlicensed firearms and ammunition.

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Massachusetts emissions 19.2% below 1990 levels, new data shows

In 2015, greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts were 19.2 percent below emissions in 1990, according to newly updated inventory data. The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs data, released on Thursday afternoon, also includes preliminary data for 2016 predicting reductions of 20.8 percent below 1990 levels. "The updated inventory utilizes an approach consistent with that taken by the U.S. (Environmental Protection Agency) and other states and countries, and reflects progress to implement greenhouse gas reduction strategies under the Global Warming Solutions Act...

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Climate change is melting the French Alps, say mountaineers

For the tourists thronging the streets and pavement cafes of Chamonix, the neck-craning view of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, is as dazzling as ever. But the mountaineers who climb among the snowy peaks know that it is far from business as usual – due to a warming climate, the familiar landscape is rapidly changing. “Global climate change has serious and directly observable consequences in high mountains,” says Vincent Neirinck from Mountain Wilderness, a campaign group that works to preserve mountain environments around the world.

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This Freaky Parasitic Vine Preys on Parasitic Wasps, And We Just Can't Deal

Parasitic gall wasps have some of the freshest cribs nature has to offer.

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Giraffe Parts Sales Are Booming in the U.S., and It’s Legal

At a time when the giraffe population is plummeting in the wild, the sale of products made with giraffe skin and bone is booming. According to a report to be released Thursday by Humane Society of the United States and its international affiliate, more than 40,000 giraffe parts were imported to the United States from 2006 to 2015 to be made into expensive pillows, boots, knife handles, bible covers and other trinkets.

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Coal Miner to Trump: ‘Coal Mining Isn’t Coming Back’

A fifth-generation coal miner from Appalachia tells Trump his plan to loosen regulations on coal-fired plants is not only harmful to the environment, but also bad for the future of the region. In the op-ed video above, Nick Mullins, a fifth-generation miner and a ninth-generation Appalachian from Virginia, explains why Trump’s sunny rhetoric about the coal industry and plans to lower emissions standards are not helping regular coal miners — they’re lining the pockets of industry executives. As coal seams dwindle, Trump’s promises to revive the industry sound false and regressive.

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Baffling Viral Video Shows Ants Carrying Flowers to a Dead Bee

It looks like something out of a sad fairy tale. Tiny ants are pulling over petals, making a pile, and on top rests a dead bumblebee. By Jacinta Bowler.

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Texas is going green: 86% of future capacity solar or wind, zero coal

ERCOT's pipeline of projects has ballooned to almost 80 GW. 12 GW of this is gas and the rest is wind and solar power plants, as well as 522 MW of energy storage.

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Climate change denial strongly linked to right-wing nationalism

With Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, as a hub, the world's first global research network into climate change denial has now been established. Building on a brand-new research publication showing the links between conservatism, xenophobia and climate change denial, the network will study how the growth of right-wing nationalism in Europe has contributed to an increase in climate change denial.

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Space Station Flight Over Hurricane Lane

Taken on August 22, 2018.

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DNA shows cave girl was half Neanderthal

Once upon a time, two early humans of different ancestry met at a cave in Russia. Some 50,000 years later, scientists have confirmed that they had a daughter together. DNA extracted from bone fragments found in the cave show the girl was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.

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Kangaroo Believed Extinct For 90 Years Caught On Camera By British Tourist

“It was hiding there, peeking down at us." By Sara C. Nelson.

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700,000-Year-Old Stone Tools Point to Mysterious Human Relative

Stone tools found in the Philippines predate the arrival of modern humans to the islands by roughly 600,000 years—but researchers aren’t sure who made them. The eye-popping artifacts, unveiled on Wednesday in Nature, were abandoned on a river floodplain on the island of Luzon beside the butchered carcass of a rhinoceros. The ancient toolmakers were clearly angling for a meal. Two of the rhino's limb bones are smashed in, as if someone was trying to harvest and eat the marrow inside. Cut marks left behind by stone blades crisscross the rhino's ribs and ankle, a clear sign that someone used tools to strip the carcass of meat.

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International Climate Change Reports Are Dangerously Misleading, Says Eminent Scientist

Those who deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change often point to the fallibility of climate models, calling those who agree with such estimates "alarmists." The bulk of climate research has tended to underplay the real risks of climate change.

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California is generating so much renewable energy, it's about to take a break

California's green policy is so successful it needs to slow down for a bit.

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The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago

Tree cover loss in the tropics was outweighed by tree cover gain in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions.

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Hawaii Braces for Category Five Hurricane

Lane is the second category five storm in recorded history to come within 350 miles of Hawaii.

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Russian presence divides Czechs 50 years after Prague Spring

Events of 1968 still influence debate about whether Russia should be seen as friend or foe

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