Science

Arctic Report Card 2017: Ice Cover Is Shrinking Faster Compared With Prior 1,500 Years

Arctic Report Card 2017: Ice Cover Is Shrinking Faster Compared With Prior 1,500 Years

By Brenda Ekwurzel The 2017 Arctic Report Card reflects contributions from 85 scientists representing 12 countries. The pace of sea ice area (hereafter extent) decrease is unprecedented over the past 1,500 years, according to Emily Osborne’s et al. 2017 contribution to the Arctic Report Card released Tuesday. Osborne and team carefully relied upon 45 different […]

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    Scientists Weigh Volcano’s Global Impact as Bali Residents Evacuate

    Scientists Weigh Volcano’s Global Impact as Bali Residents Evacuate

    On Wednesday the Indonesian government opened an airport on Bali as wind blew away ash spewing out of a volcano, clearing the air for planes and giving residents and tourists a chance to escape. In the past several days, the volcano has disrupted operations at Bali’s airport, the second-busiest in Indonesia, while tens of thousands […]

    Hawking to Trump: Renounce Your Denial of Climate Change

    Hawking to Trump: Renounce Your Denial of Climate Change

    In a recent sit-down with WIRED UK, famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking sounded off on the ongoing anti-science movement. “People distrust science because they don’t understand how it works,” Hawking said. “It seems as if we are now living in a time in which science and scientists are in danger of being held in low, […]

    Climate-Denying Koch Brothers Back Purchase of Time Magazine

    Climate-Denying Koch Brothers Back Purchase of Time Magazine

    By Andy Rowell The media company Meredith announced Sunday night that it’s buying Time magazine for an estimated $2.8 billion. “We are creating a premier media company serving nearly 200 million American consumers across industry-leading digital, television, print, video, mobile and social platforms positioned for growth,” said Meredith Corporation Chairman and CEO Stephen Lacy. Buried […]

    Report: Social Cost of Carbon Has Been Drastically Underestimated

    Report: Social Cost of Carbon Has Been Drastically Underestimated

    Our understanding of the social cost of carbon (SCC) relied on outdated science from the 1980s, and is likely wrong. The latest calculations based on new modeling by UCLA and Purdue University show a drastic divergence with previous results—an increase of 129 percent, which moves the figure to $19.70 per ton of carbon dioxide. This […]

    EPA: Perchlorate in Drinking Water Can Harm Fetal Brain Development

    EPA: Perchlorate in Drinking Water Can Harm Fetal Brain Development

    By Tom Neltner Pursuant to a consent decree with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is developing drinking water regulations to protect fetuses and young children from perchlorate, a toxic chemical that inhibits the thyroid’s ability to make the hormone T4 essential to brain development. The rulemaking is part […]

    Bright Idea: This Lamp Harvests Its Own Energy From Plants

    Bright Idea: This Lamp Harvests Its Own Energy From Plants

    Now that’s green energy. Dutch product designer Ermi van Oers and her team are working on the first atmospheric lamp powered by living plants. The Living Light does not require an electric socket. It can harvest its own energy through the photosynthetic process of the encased plant, which means the potential of this off-grid light […]

    Why Honeycutt Is Such an Alarming Choice for EPA’s Science Advisory Panel

    Why Honeycutt Is Such an Alarming Choice for EPA’s Science Advisory Panel

    By Elena Craft Michael Honeycutt—the man set to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA‘s) prestigious Science Advisory Board—has spent most of his career as a credentialed counterpoint against almost anything the EPA has proposed to protect human health. Fortunately, his lone voice for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality rarely carried beyond the Lone […]

    15,000 Scientists From 184 Countries Warn Humanity of Environmental Catastrophe

    15,000 Scientists From 184 Countries Warn Humanity of Environmental Catastrophe

    More than 15,000 scientists have signed a chilling article titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice,” urging global leaders to save the planet from environmental catastrophe. The plea, published Monday in the international journal BioScience, is likely the largest-ever formal support by scientists for a journal article with 15,372 total signatories, Motherboard noted. […]