What happened A United Nations panel of the world’s leading environmental scientists issued its most dire warnings on the dangers posed by climate change, saying global warming is already affecting every continent and threatens to devastate food supplies, cause mass extinctions of plants and animals, worsen droughts, and raise the risk of wars over resources. The longer society holds off […]
Read more
Second-generation biofuel made from natural grass species challenges ethanol derived from maize crops as the US seeks to reduce its fossil fuel use. LONDON, January, 2016 – In tomorrow’s world, it won’t be just the corn on the great American plains that is as high as an elephant’s eye. It will be the elephant grass as well. To deliver on […]
Read more
The key to helping animals evolve quickly in response to climate change could actually be their predators, according to a new UBC study. The study is one of the first to show that species interactions, meaning the way species interact with each other in an ecosystem, like in a predator-prey relationship, is important to understanding how animals will respond to […]
Read more
“Colony collapse disorder” the mysterious, decade-long die-off among honeybees, is getting worse. A survey of about 5,000 beekeepers in the U.S. has found that they’ve lost about 42 percent of their colonies over just the past year. Even more alarming is the fact that honeybee deaths spiked in the summer, when bees are usually healthiest. “What we’re seeing with this […]
Read more
Polar bear numbers are expanding The Effects of Global Warming on Polar Bears has been quite significant. “A main Canadian power on polar bears, Mitch Taylor, said: ‘We’re seeing an increment in bears that is truly phenomenal, and in spots where we’re seeing an abatement in the populace it’s from chasing, not from environmental change.’” (Scotsman.com) Polar bears are found […]
Read more
Scientists believe is a new whale species is doing the exact opposite of other whales. It is being as heard as it is seen. Recordings taken near the polar continent captured a strange, never-before-heard whale sound — a signal they are calling “Antarctic BW29”. Researchers say that they located the signal 1,000 times in 14 separate recordings. The unique sounds […]
Read more
Ghana is being pressured to sell out it’s global agribusiness. The U.S. and the global seed industry are trying to strong-arm Ghana into adopting the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, known as UPOV. The treaty confers intellectual property rights on huge seed companies such as Monsanto and locks farmers into a limited selection of […]
Read more
Sophrony Kirilov pulls hard on the strings of the heavy Russian bells from inside the world’s southernmost Eastern Orthodox church, calling to Mass anybody wanting to pray on this remote Antarctic island. The 38-year-old Russian priest is clad in a loose black robe and a vest dotted with patches of penguins and seals, marking his four years of service […]
Read more
The amount of plastic garbage in the North Pacific Ocean has risen a hundredfold since the 1970s, and the floating debris is now so abundant that marine life is adapting to its presence. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography sampled an expanse of the sea between Hawaii and California, where currents tend to deposit flotsam from around the Pacific […]
Read more