Science

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, […]

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    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. […]

    Conservationists, Computer Scientists to Map a ‘Safety Net’ for Earth

    Conservationists, Computer Scientists to Map a ‘Safety Net’ for Earth

    By Mike Gaworecki A team of biologists and computer scientists plan to map a global “safety net” for planet Earth. The mapping effort, to be led by Washington, DC-based non-profit research organization RESOLVE together with Globaïa, an NGO based in Quebec, Canada, and Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Viçosa, aims to identify the most critical terrestrial […]

    EPA Approves Release of Mosquito-Killing Mosquitoes in 20 States

    EPA Approves Release of Mosquito-Killing Mosquitoes in 20 States

    Kentucky-based biotechnology startup MosquitoMate was given U.S. government approval to release bacteria-infected mosquitoes in several states. The company’s lab-grown Aedes albopictus (aka ZAP males) are designed to halt the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. So how does it work? When ZAP males mate with wild female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can carry yellow fever, dengue and […]

    How the Ancient Antarctic Explains Today’s Warming World

    How the Ancient Antarctic Explains Today’s Warming World

    By Tim Radford Deep in the last Ice Age, 17,700 years ago, the ancient Antarctic suddenly began to warm. Climate change, unexpectedly, made itself felt in the Southern Hemisphere. Glaciers in Patagonia and in New Zealand began to retreat. Lakes in the Bolivian Andes began to swell with meltwater. Rain fell in the desert of […]

    This Year’s Ozone Hole Is the Smallest It’s Been Since 1988

    This Year’s Ozone Hole Is the Smallest It’s Been Since 1988

    The hole in Earth’s ozone layer is the smallest it’s been since 1988, NASA satellite estimates observed. While the ozone hole is still enormous—measuring about 19.6 million square kilometers (7.6 million square miles, or 2.5 times the size of the U.S.) at its annual peak extent this Sept. 11—that’s much smaller compared to the average […]

    ‘Victory for Science’ as ‘Comically Bad’ Sam Clovis Withdraws and Climate-Denying Lamar Smith Plans to Retire

    ‘Victory for Science’ as ‘Comically Bad’ Sam Clovis Withdraws and Climate-Denying Lamar Smith Plans to Retire

    Former Trump campaign aide and climate change denier Sam Clovis withdrew his nomination for the chief scientist position at the Department of Agriculture on Wednesday. Clovis faced increasing scrutiny this week after it was revealed that he knew campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos was establishing contact with Russian officials in 2016. In an October […]

    World’s Largest Tropical Reforestation to Plant 73 Million Trees in Brazilian Amazon

    World’s Largest Tropical Reforestation to Plant 73 Million Trees in Brazilian Amazon

    The largest tropical reforestation effort in history aims to restore 73 million trees in the Brazilian Amazon by 2023. The multimillion dollar, six-year project, led by Conservation International, spans 30,000 hectares of land—the equivalent of the size of 30,000 soccer fields, or nearly 70,000 acres. The effort will help Brazil move towards its Paris agreement […]