Fracking Boom Spurs Environmental Audit
As hydraulic fracturing unlocks new gas reserves, researchers struggle to understand its health implications.
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Hidden Fingerprint of Weapons-Grade Plutonium Finally Found
After 50 years of searching, physicists have spotted the fingerprint of radioactive plutonium, revealing the secrets of this complex molecule behind nuclear weapons. The researchers found the “plutonium signal” using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which is often used to peer into the electronic structure of atoms and molecules. Their findings, detailed in a recent issue…
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Natural Sinks Still Sopping Up Carbon
Earth’s ecosystems keep soaking up more carbon as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, new measurements find. The research contradicts several recent studies suggesting that “carbon sinks” have reached or passed their capacity. By looking at global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the new work, presented at an annual conference on global monitoring, calculates instead…
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How to Rid the World of the “Element from Hell”
The vast majority of the radioactive plutonium on the planet is man-made—roughly 500 metric tons, or enough to make 100,000 nuclear weapons by the calculations of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. Much of it is the legacy of the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Russia in the latter decades of the 20th…
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Humanity Outstripping Earth’s Resources, Biodiversity in Decline
Global Biodiversity Down 30 Percent in 40 Years: Humanity is essentially using the resources of one and a half Earths every year.
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Scientists Generate Electricity From Viruses
Novel generator uses harmless viruses to create an electric charge.
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Hansen: Game Over for the Climate
Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why it was so troubling to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it…
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Hellish Coal Fires Roast Underworld for a Century
Wherever there is coal, there will be fire. For centuries, we have dug up the combustible rock to power our industries, and we continue to rely on it to light our homes and keep the wired world humming. But each year millions of tons of coal are burned inadvertently, too – in underground fires that…
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Is Global Warming Driven By Economic Growth?
To slow climate change the world will either have to put the brakes on economic growth or change the way the world’s economies work, scientists say. A study by University of Michigan researchers assessed the effects of several factors on year-to-year changes in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Researchers looked at two natural phenomena believed…
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Large Wind Farms Increase Temperatures Near Ground
Large wind farms slightly increase temperatures near the ground as the turbines’ rotor blades pull down warm air, according to researchers who analyzed nine years of satellite readings around four of the world’s biggest wind farms. The study showed for the first time that wind farms of a certain scale, while producing clean, renewable energy,…