Oil Price Crash Opens A Window Of Opportunity For Renewables

Just a month ago, companies and investors had a financial incentive to continue investing in new oil and gas projects despite the societal and environmentalist backlash against fossil fuels. Not anymore. In just a couple of weeks, the oil price crash made investments in renewable energy starting to look more attractive. Or at least as attractive as investment in oil and gas.

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What the Coronavirus Curve Teaches Us About Climate Change

The coronavirus pandemic—sadly—has introduced or reintroduced many people to the concept of an exponential curve, in which a quantity grows at an increasing rate over time, as the number of people contracting the virus currently is doing. It is this curve that so many of us are trying to “flatten” through social distancing and other mitigating measures, small and large.

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People built bone circles at the edge of ice sheets, and we don’t know why

As the last Ice Age tightened its hold on Europe, a group of people living near the Don River piled dozens of mammoth bones into a 12.5m (30ft) wide circle. They may have lived in the shelter of the mammoth bones for a while, huddling around fragrant fires of conifer wood and mammoth bone and making stone tools. But the traces they left are so light that it seems they didn’t stay long—or maybe they only visited occasionally.

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The ozone layer is healing, new study finds

The ozone layer is continuing to heal and has the potential to fully recover, according to a new study. A scientific paper, published in Nature, heralds a rare success in the reversal of environmental damage and shows that orchestrated global action can make a difference.

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White House suspends environmental protection, citing coronavirus

2020 has a new motto: "Cancelled due to the coronavirus." Businesses, schools, sports, travel, film, and TV production, conferences, meetings, and basically any and all business as usual has been suspended in the US as individuals and institutions try to slow the spread of COVID-19. We have, at least, had outdoor space to go to—staying at least six feet away from others as we do—when we need a break from the four walls of our homes.

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Scientists find bug that feasts on toxic plastic

A bacterium that feeds on toxic plastic has been discovered by scientists. The bug not only breaks the plastic down but uses it as food to power the process. The bacterium, which was found at a waste site where plastic had been dumped, is the first that is known to attack polyurethane. Millions of tonnes of the plastic is produced every year to use in items such as sports shoes, nappies, kitchen sponges and as foam insulation, but it is mostly sent to landfill because it it too tough to recycle.

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Why a Plague of Locusts is Threatening Crops in Africa and Beyond

Over the past few months, massive swarms of locusts, one of which occupied an area more than three times the size of New York City, have devoured crops across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, leaving an estimated 20 million people at risk of famine. The first generation’s eggs are starting to hatch, and now even bigger swarms are forming, threatening countries from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Yemen, Iran, Pakistan and India, “representing an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods,” says the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

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Scientists say plastic Lego bricks could linger in the ocean for up to 1,300 years

The study sheds light on just how long certain types of plastic can live on in the marine environment.

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We should stop buying fish until the industry stops slaughtering dolphins

How many people want dolphins killed? Apart from the psychopath shooting them in Florida, and the Japanese hunters slaughtering them every year in Taiji cove, I would hazard a guess at none. They are perhaps the world’s most loved wild animals. Yet, every day, dolphin killers form an orderly queue, at supermarket checkouts in the UK and around the world. If you are buying fish, and there is no clear and watertight guarantee, you are likely to be complicit in something that would revolt you.

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England could face droughts in 20 years due to climate breakdown - report

England is in danger of experiencing droughts within 20 years unless action is taken to combat the impact of the climate crisis on water availability, the public spending watchdog says. The National Audit Office (NAO), in a report published on Wednesday, says some parts of England, especially the south-east, are at risk of running out of water owing to decreased rainfall and a need to cut the amount taken from natural waterways.

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The fight to save Europe's olive trees from disease

A plant disease spread by sap-sucking insects has been devastating olive and fruit orchards across southern Europe, but scientists are inching closer to halting its spread with the help of insect repelling clays, vegetative barriers and genetic analysis.

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Paris Climate Agreement Architects Make a Case for “Stubborn Optimism”

When Christiana Figueres took the reins of the United Nations’ international climate negotiations in 2010, hopes were not high that the world would come together to forge an agreement to tackle global warming—especially after talks had fallen apart in Copenhagen the previous year. In fact, when she was asked at a press conference if she thought such a global agreement would ever be possible, she replied, “Not in my lifetime.”

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Zagreb hit by earthquake while in coronavirus lockdown

Croatian capital hit by its biggest quake in 140 years, according to PM, causing damage and injury

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We Must Respond to Climate Change Like We're Responding to Coronavirus

You know that gnawing feeling of “oh, God, we’re in the midst of something horrible” you have because of the coronavirus? Are you looking around at this crisis sweeping across the world and feeling helpless because you have limited power to stop it?

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New York’s Last Coal-Fired Power Plant Is Closing

The community is fearful of what will happen once it shutters.

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'Nature is taking back Venice': wildlife returns to tourist-free city

Look down into the waters of the Venice canals today and there is a surprising sight – not just a clear view of the sandy bed, but shoals of tiny fish, scuttling crabs and multicoloured plant-life. “The water is blue and clear,” said Gloria Beggiato, who owns the celebrated Metropole Hotel a few steps from St Mark’s square and has a view over the Venice lagoon. “It is calm like a pond, because there are no more waves caused by motorised boats transporting day-tripper tourists. And of course, the giant cruise ships have disappeared.”

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Ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland increased sixfold in the last 30 years

Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice six times faster than in the 1990s, a pair of studies in the journal Nature show. According to the international team of climatologists behind the research, the unprecedented rate of melt has already contributed 0.7 inches (1.78 centimeters) to global sea level rise in the last three decades, putting the planet on track for the worst-case climate warming scenario laid out in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest report.

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Controversial New Theory Suggests Life Wasn't a Fluke of Biology—It Was Physics

Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s provocative origin-of-life hypothesis are in, and they appear to show how order can arise from nothing.

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Melbourne zoos are now live-streaming their penguins, lions and baby snow leopards

Practising social distancing right now? Luckily for you, Melbourne’s zoos have decided to live stream their animals so you won’t miss out on a second of all that cute creature fun. Zoos Victoria has set up live streams at some Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo enclosures, including the adorable snow leopard cubs. These adorable (and frequently napping) cubs were born on January 26 and are starting to explore the world a little more under the watchful eye of their mum Miska.

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What causes an ice age to end?

New University of Melbourne research has revealed that ice ages over the last million years ended when the tilt angle of the Earth's axis was approaching higher values.

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Greenland's melting ice raised global sea level by 2.2mm in two months

Last year’s summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600bn tons of ice from Greenland – enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months, new research has found. The analysis of satellite data has revealed the astounding loss of ice in just a few months of abnormally high temperatures around the northern pole. Last year was the hottest on record for the Arctic, with the annual minimum extent of sea ice in the region its second-lowest on record.

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A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths

The purpose of such an elaborate structure remains a big open question

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10 Animal Webcams You Can Watch Right Now

Thanks to various livestreaming services, you can keep your eye on these animals, no matter where you are!

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'The rich are to blame for climate change'

The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, a study by the University of Leeds of 86 countries claims. The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live. The gulf is greatest in transport, where the top tenth gobble 187 times more fuel than the poorest tenth, the research says.

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There's an unlikely beneficiary of coronavirus: The planet

Factories were shuttered and streets were cleared across China's Hubei province as authorities ordered residents to stay home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. It seems the lockdown had an unintended benefit -- blue skies.

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Discovered: 25,000-year-old structure made from the bones of an Ice Age beast

Under layers of dirt, pinpricked with animal burrows and shrubs, archeologists found a circle of mammoth bones — evidence of a dwelling built between 25,063 to 24,490 years ago.

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Rubber ‘leaves’ reveal the physics of the floating lotus

Scientists explore why some lotus leaves lie smooth and flat, but others are deeply ruffled.

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When Covid-19 Has Passed, We Will Still Need To Fix The Environment

2020 was supposed to be pivotal for the environment. The end date of a raft of corporate sustainability goals, the year the Paris Agreement kicks into gear. “But now we’re here, it’s clear business and governments are falling short of what needs to be achieved," say risk analysts Maplecroft.

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On the verge: a quiet roadside revolution is boosting wildflowers

In 2014, Giles Nicholson was battling the growing year from hell. A mild winter followed by a warm, wet spring had turbocharged a ferocious mass of cow parsley, nettles and dense grass along the hundreds of miles of road his team maintains for Dorset council. Austerity meant there was barely enough money to pay for repeated cuttings to hold back the matted swards. Complaints poured in about messy roadsides.

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81 dangerous substances found in salmon caught in Seattle

Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) have been found to contain up to 81 drugs from the contaminated Puget Sound, along the coast of Washington state. During research, drugs including Prozac, Advil, Lipitor and even cocaine were discovered within the salmon’s flesh. Supposedly, these substance levels have rocketed due to high drug use within the local area.

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Life After People

A look at what would happen if humans disappeared from Earth. How would ecology adapt and change to cope with the lack of human beings, and what will the earth look like into a future without humans.

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The Army Bombed a Hawaiian Lava Flow. It Didn’t Work.

It could be tried again if the city of Hilo comes under threat, although many object to such airstrikes.

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'Biological hazard': GM cows and the experiment that went wrong

In a paddock in rural Australia are five calves that look just like any others. But they're not — they're biological hazards.

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World's smallest dinosaur discovered entombed in amber

Someone call Steven Spielberg

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Governments must act to stop the coronavirus – but we can't return to business as usual

If our aim is to protect human and environmental health, restoring the status quo is not good enough. Thankfully, there is an alternative.

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Greta Thunberg's Online Attackers Reveal a Grim Pattern

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is 17 years old, legally a minor. Despite her age, in the past week, numerous actual adults have made her the subject of many forms of online harassment. Some say she ought to be “burnt at the stake”; others have circulated images of a sex doll that resembles Thunberg and purportedly “speaks” using recordings of her voice; still others created and distributed a cartoon that appears to depict the activist being sexually assaulted.

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London’s Trees Are Saving the City Billions

London’s leafy streets and gardens have long been prized for their beauty — and more recently their ability to counteract carbon emissions and improve air quality. But the value of urban trees can also be measured with money. A new report from Britain’s Office of National Statistics estimates tree cover saved the capital more than 5 billion pounds ($6.56 billion) from 2014 to 2018 through air cooling alone.

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Revealed: Monsanto’s secret funding for weedkiller studies

The research, used to help avoid a ban, claimed ‘severe impacts’ on farming if glyphosate was outlawed

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List of Animals That Have Passed the Mirror Test

The mirror test was developed by psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr.1 in 1970 as a method for determining whether a non-human animal has the ability of self-recognition.

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Elon Musk's Battery Farm Is an Undeniable Success

More than two years after winning an electricity bet, Elon Musk’s resulting Australian solar and wind farm is an almost total success. The facility powers rural South Australia, whose population density falls between Wyoming and Alaska, the two least dense U.S. states.

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Is your coffee contributing to malaria risk?

Researchers at the University of Sydney and University of São Paulo, Brazil, estimate 20 percent of the malaria risk in deforestation hot spots is driven by the international trade of exports including: coffee, timber, soybean, cocoa, wood products, palm oil, tobacco, beef and cotton.

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Scientists will soon be able to monitor air pollution hourly from space

Scientists from South Korea, USA, and Europe are working together

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A Controversial Study: Where There Are Girls, There Are Cats

This cat study gets temporarily retracted. I analyse the controversy.

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Why we need to kill the lawn

There are, by some estimates, more than 40 million acres of green lawns in the U.S., making turf grass the largest irrigated crop in the country. A new book suggests that landowners repurpose some of their landscaping for another purpose: creating a “Homegrown National Park,” a connected network of more natural gardens that could help stave off the insect apocalypse and the collapse of broader ecosystems.

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High-density hybrid powercapacitors: A new frontier in the energy race

Hybrid "power capacitors" that can store as much energy as lithium batteries, but with much higher charge/discharge rates, a huge range of safe operating temperatures, super-long lifespans and no risk of explosion are already in production, says a small Belgian company that's been testing them and selling them for some time.

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How South Korea Is Composting Its Way to Sustainability

Automated bins, rooftop farms, and underground mushroom-growing help clean up the mess.

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Pro-Trump Climate Denial Group Lays Off Staff Amid Financial Woes, Ex-Employees Say

An influential climate-denial think tank bankrolled by President Donald Trump’s far-right billionaire donors has laid off nearly a dozen staffers amid financial troubles, according to three former employees.

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These farmers say their cows can solve the climate crisis

Danie Slabbert points toward the cattle that brought his farm back to life. Down the slope ahead of him, 500 black Drakensberger and mottled Nguni cows graze cheek by jowl.

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'Incredible journey': Loggerhead turtle, released from 20 years in captivity, swims 37,000km to Australia

An 180 kilogram turtled named Yoshi has excited scientists, who tracked her remarkable journey halfway around the world after she was released from 20 years in captivity.

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Using dog walking to improve mental health

“The dogs also just give you the love that you feel like you crave while you’re at university.” That’s what Luke Davies, secretary of the Sussex Uni Dog Walking Society, says about its weekly dog walks. The society’s members also say interacting with the 45 dogs help their mental health and stress related to their work.

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