By Glynn Wilson – Texting, using a cellphone and sending and reading email messages are the most frequently used forms of nonpersonal communication for adult Americans topping home phones and Twitter by far, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject. Between 37 percent and 39 percent of all Americans said they used each…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – I’m not going to lie, this week’s election was a blow. That’s exactly why we’re doubling down now, and I need to know you are too. Friends of Big Oil have taken control of the Senate, and they have a 100-day action plan that reads like Big Oil’s…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – NASA launched its sixth consecutive year of Antarctica overflights to study changes that could be a significant harbinger of climate change due to global warming. The science craft measures the ice sheet over all, the glaciers and the surrounding sea ice for changes that could provide scientists with the latest up-to-date information…
Take a look at the secret lives of these endangered bats in what is believed to be the first-ever video taken inside a bonneted bat’s natural roost. To find Florida bonneted bats you would usually look in artificial roosts such as bat houses. “The bats definitely yawned a lot. We probably woke them up,” one…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – Due to federal regulations, like it or not, automobile fuel economy has hit an all time high in the United States, while carbon dioxide emissions are now at a record low, according to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency. Model year 2013 vehicles achieved an average of…
By David Underhill – NEW YORK, N.Y. – Teddy Roosevelt looked down from his bronze horse and saw time spin off course. The forged Indian and African afoot beside him for nearly a century abandoned the pedestal and strode into the street. In the Museum of Natural History behind him the display cases showing natives…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – If anyone doubted the existence of a mighty climate movement in this country, then the sight of more than 400,000 determined, joyful, vociferous people marching through midtown Manhattan in the People’s Climate March in New York City last Sunday has set them straight. Even for those of us…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – I’ve long known how wasteful, destructive, and dangerous the process of extracting oil from tar sands is. To get one barrel of oil, you have to dig up four tons of dirt and rock. Beautiful old-growth boreal forest becomes a wasteland. And that single barrel of oil? It…
Earth’s atmosphere contains an unexpectedly large amount of an ozone-depleting chemical compound from an unknown source, surpassingly, decades after the compound was banned worldwide, according to new research out from NASA published in the Aug. 18 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), once used in dry cleaning and fire-extinguishers, was regulated in 1987…
A new NASA field campaign will begin flights over the Arctic this summer to study the effect of sea ice retreat on Arctic climate. The Arctic Radiation IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE) will conduct research flights Aug. 28 through Oct. 1, covering the peak of summer sea ice melt, according to a release just…
By Glynn Wilson – The controversial Keystone XL pipeline being constructed from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast could produce four times more global warming causing carbon pollution than the U.S. State Department estimated earlier this year, according to a new study out from scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute published Sunday in the journal…
The signs of climate change are all around us, according to a new report just released by the White House. The average temperature in the United States during the past decade was 0.8° Celsius (1.5° Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1901-1960 average, and the last decade was the warmest on record both in the United States…
A new study by scientists at NASA and the University of California at Irvine finds more than 75 percent of the water loss in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin since late 2004 came from underground sources. The extent of groundwater loss may pose a greater threat to the water supply of the western United States…
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have gone looking for water vapor in the atmospheres of three planets orbiting stars similar to the sun — and have come up nearly dry. The three planets, known as HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-12b, are between 60 and 900 light-years away from Earth and were thought to…
NASA embarked this week on a coordinated ship and aircraft observation campaign off the Atlantic coast of the United States in an effort to advance space-based capabilities for monitoring microscopic plants that form the base of the marine food chain. Phytoplankton, tiny ocean plants that absorb carbon dioxide and deliver oxygen to Earth’s atmosphere, play…
They may be little, but they pack a big star-forming punch. New observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope show small galaxies, also known as dwarf galaxies, are responsible for forming a large proportion of the universe’s stars. Studying this early epoch of the universe’s history is critical to fully understanding how these stars formed and…
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have assembled a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe – among the most colorful deep space images ever captured by the 24-year-old telescope. Researchers say the image, in new study called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, provides the missing link in star formation. The Hubble…
By Glynn Wilson – At the behest of President Obama and after months of planning and public feedback, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the much anticipated Clean Power Plan proposal on Monday. It seeks to cut carbon pollution from existing coal-fired power plants — the largest source of carbon pollution in the country —…
Glaciologist Richard Alley explains that losing West Antarctica would produce 10 feet of sea level rise in coming centuries. That’s comparable to the flooding from Sandy, but permanent. – By Chris Mooney – If you want to truly grasp the scale of Earth’s polar ice sheets, you need some help from Isaac Newton. Newton taught…
A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea. The study presents multiple lines of evidence, incorporating…
