Coaxing U.S. federal agencies to work together is no small feat. But an emerging National Ocean Policy (NOP) is attempting to do just that. The Obama Administration’s proposed NOP will help federal agencies better organize marine research efforts and inject data into policy decisions—and potentially prevent conflicts between ocean users and save money, U.S. officials…
Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, researchers said. British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus. By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs – as a whole – produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually. The…
Efforts to promote sustainable development must tap into technologies developed locally, driven by community needs and priorities. The products of modern science and technology (S&T), from chemical pesticides to carbon-emitting combustion engines, are frequently blamed — with some justification — for the unsustainable use of the planet’s resources. At the same time S&T offers a…
In the clammy depths of a southern Illinois coal mine lies the largest fossil forest ever discovered, at least 50 times as extensive as the previous contender. Scientists are exploring dripping passages by the light of headlamps, mapping out an ecosystem from 307 million years ago, just before the world’s first great forests were wiped…
Plants flowering 8.5 times faster than predicted; changes have knock-on effect for food chain, ecosystems
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…
Alcoa, the world’s leading producer of primary aluminum, just unveiled its first commercial building installations of smog-eating architectural panels they call Reynobond with EcoClean. The aluminum panels are coated with titanium dioxide. Its air-purifying properties have been widely used in other self-cleaning products such as air-purifying light bulbs. Alcoa claims that by adding 10,000 square…
For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong. Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97% of working climate…
New research suggests that global warming is causing the cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the oceans to intensify more than scientists had expected, an ominous finding that may indicate a higher potential for extreme weather in coming decades. By measuring changes in salinity on the ocean’s surface, the researchers inferred that the water cycle…
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,…