The next time you think about having sex without birth control, The Center for Biological Diversity wants to make sure that you consider how it might affect the greater world around you. Since 2009, the non-profit has handed out 450,000 condoms with endangered species awareness messages on their wrappers. How would your next passionate evening…
Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as…
A new map that divides the world’s vertebrates into 11 biogeographic realms is the biggest update to a 19th century version, and one of the most important maps for our understanding of global biodiversity. The map was published online in the journal Science. The original map was created by naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1876. He divided the…
When you hear about climate change it’s most often about melting glaciers and sea ice, increasing frequency of heatwaves and powerful storms. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll hear about the acidification of the oceans too. What you don’t hear about is the saltiness of the seas. But that’s changing too, according to a new piece of…
Though birds, trees, and orchids call the tropical rain forest home, they are immensely outnumbered by tiny arthropods, such as insects, spiders and millipedes. In the past, scientists had trouble estimating how many arthropods exist in the vastness of a forest. But thanks to new methods of sampling and analysis, researchers now think that over…
The death rate of many of the biggest and oldest trees around the world is increasing rapidly, scientists report in a new study published in the journal Science. They warned that research to understand and stem the loss of the trees is urgently needed. The research team found that big, old trees are dying at…
The annual United Nations climate change negotiations concluded in Doha after the customary all-night negotiating session and recriminations over who must bear the costs and burdens of a warming planet. Delegates from more than 190 nations agreed to extend the increasingly ineffective Kyoto Protocol a few years and to commit to more ambitious — but…
On January 1, 2013, the world can go back to emitting greenhouse gases with abandon. The pollution-reduction commitments that nations made as part of the Kyoto Protocol will expire, leaving the planet without any international climate regulation and uncertain prospects for a future treaty. Nature explores the options for limiting — and living with —…
The savannah habitat that sustains African lions has shrunk by 75 percent over the past half-century, according to a study published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, a dramatic loss that could threaten the species’ survival. The new analysis by American, African and British researchers — which suggests the continent’s lion population has declined from…
Two major organizations released climate change reports this month warning of doom and gloom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. A World Bank report imagines a world 4 degrees warmer, the temperature predicted by century’s end barring changes, and says it aims to shock people into action…