By Tim Radford U.S. scientists who have been warning that warmer oceans are more likely to be poorer in dissolved oxygen have now sounded the alarm: ocean oxygen levels are indeed falling, and seemingly falling faster than the corresponding rise in water temperature. That colder water can hold more dissolved gas than warmer water is […]
By Jonathan Hahn On President Trump’s first Earth Day in the White House, he declared on Twitter that “we celebrate our beautiful forests, lakes and lands”—an amiable if blasé arm-punch to the planet from the leader of the free world. Until a few hours later that is, when the president resorted to his usual right […]
A research team discovered that the caterpillars of the greater wax moth—considered a pest in Europe because it eats the beeswax from honeycombs—also has the ability to biodegrade polyethylene, the same material used in whale-choking, landfill-clogging plastic shopping bags. Incredibly, this discovery was all down to chance. Scientist and amateur beekeeper Federica Bertocchini of Spain’s […]
President Trump is poised to threaten more than 1 billion acres of national monument protection in a devastating and unprecedented attack on America’s public lands and oceans. Trump is expected to issue an executive order April 26 calling for a review of every national monument that’s been protected by presidential proclamation since 1996. His goal […]
By Tim Radford Scientists poring over military and satellite imagery have mapped the unimaginable: a network of rivers, streams, ponds, lakes and even a waterfall, flowing over the ice shelf of a continent with an annual mean temperature of more than -50C. In 1909 Ernest Shackleton and his fellow explorers on their way to the […]
Ocean plastic has reached the northernmost ends of the earth. The remote and icy waters of the Arctic Ocean are also being inundated by this form of non-biodegradable pollution. According to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, currents carrying trash, originating mostly from the North Atlantic, are flowing north into the Greenland […]
By Mikey Jane Moran “There are no cod left in Cape Cod,” said a New England chef with a shrug of his shoulders. And he really means no cod. The salty docks of Gloucester, Massachusetts—once the hub of American fishing culture, bustling with wind-blown fishermen hauling nets full of squirming fish—is nearly deserted. Due to […]
By David Pinsky The U.S. is the largest market for canned tuna in the world. U.S. consumers purchase countless cans and serve up thousands of tuna melts day after day. Today’s flashy labels and PR claims from supermarket and national tuna brands can be confusing and sometimes deceiving. Even worse, much of the canned tuna […]
Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans from Alaska, have introduced legislation to expand oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and Cook Inlet, putting fragile ecosystems and endangered wildlife at risk. In December, President Obama permanently protected large areas of U.S. waters in the Arctic from oil and gas drilling. The new […]