By David Wallinga, MD Kids can die from superbugs, just as adults do. But a new study last week was among the first I’d seen to dive more deeply and specifically into how this superbug crisis threatens your kids. The study’s findings, which the author called “ominous,” appeared in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious […]
For years, Republican lawmakers have tried to scrap NASA‘s climate change research in favor of space exploration, but with President Trump and his cabinet of climate skeptics now in control, the space agency’s earth sciences budget could finally be on the chopping block. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the notoriously science-averse chairman of the House Committee […]
Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier lost another large chunk of ice at the end of January. The section of ice that broke off the glacier on the western coast of Antarctica was roughly the size of Manhattan. It was 10 times smaller than the piece the same glacier sloughed in July 2015. After the enormous piece […]
English researchers have discovered an alarming amount of toxic pollution in the bodies of amphipods living in the deep sea trenches of the Pacific Ocean. The research team from Newcastle University, the James Hutton Institute and the University of Aberdeen caught and tested small crustaceans in the Mariana and Kermadec trenches, which reach about 30,000 […]
I coined the term “Serengeti Strategy” in my 2012 book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. It’s meant to describe how industry special interests and their patrons in power single out individual researchers or teams of scientists for attack, in much the same way lions of the Serengeti single out an individual zebra from […]
By Scott Weaver As a climate scientist I’ve been trained to base my conclusions strictly on scientific evidence and not on politics. This is why I find it so troubling that President Trump’s pick for the top job at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) openly misrepresented scientific data during his confirmation process. Trump's EPA […]
By Marlene Cimons Ten years ago, Japanese chemist Eijiro Miyako was trying to invent a liquid that could work as an electrical conductor. But the sticky gel he created failed, so he shoved it into a cabinet in an uncapped bottle and forgot about it. Recently, during a lab cleanup, it was rediscovered—with the viscous […]
By Robert McSweeney The oceans are a hugely important “carbon sink,” helping absorb CO2 emissions from human activities. Without them, CO2 would accumulate more quickly in the atmosphere, raising temperatures more quickly. A new study, published in Nature, finds that recent changes in circulation patterns in the world’s oceans are playing a key role in […]
In various interviews on Thursday, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition chief Myron Ebell confirmed the Trump team would probably seek significant cuts to the agency’s workforce and budget, but would not provide details of specific policy recommendations he made to the president. Ebell, who told the AP that the federal government has “been […]