Nature for nerds
Billions of years ago when the world was still young, treasure began forming deep underground. As the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates plunged down into the upper mantle, bits of carbon, some likely hailing from long-dead life forms were melted and compressed into rigid lattices. Over millions of years, those lattices grew into the most … Continued
New research presented Monday at the annual American Thoracic Society Conference shows that the worst form of black lung—a disease most prevalent among coal mine workers—is on the rise, placing recent generations of miners at greater risk of dying from the respiratory disease than earlier ones. And a shift in mining technology several decades back … Continued
Atlantic hurricane season officially starts on June 1, but the ocean and atmosphere are paying the calendar no heed. A swirl of clouds and thunderstorms off the Florida coast has a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical storm in the next 48 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center. That would make it the … Continued
The South saw a few dozen tornadoes over the weekend, but Monday’s conditions are ripe for something much worse. The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a high alert forecast for tornadoes across parts of Texas and Oklahoma, including Oklahoma City. The storms that could spawn them will also unleash damaging hail and heavy rain … Continued
Environmentalists have a new reason to roll their eyes at Justin Bieber. According to the Associated Press, a canyon on the southern coast of Iceland where the Biebs shot a 2015 music video has been overrun with ecologically destructive tourists ever since. This was first widely reported in March, when the Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon closed a … Continued
The notion that we’re headed towards some kind of populational apocalypse—that there exists a line which, once crossed, will lead inexorably to mass starvation, and a whole planet like Penn Station at rush hour—has been used to stoke fear and sell books for more than a century. The discourse surrounding these concerns can be so … Continued
A dangerous weather setup is shaping up over the Midwest this weekend. Powerful storms could usher tornadoes, hail, and lighting into the region, putting millions at risk. Heavy rain could also cause flash floods as it falls on saturated soil in areas already grappling with historic flooding. May is prime time for severe weather in … Continued
Have you ever wondered what human-caused climate change sounds like? What melodic rhythms could result from every rising degree? Well, a scientist with a taste for music has got you covered. On Wednesday Lucy Jones, a seismologist who also composes music, published “In Nomine Terra Calens,” an ode to our ever-warming planet. The classically trained … Continued
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before but the ice is screwed. New findings released on Thursday reveal that a quarter of the ice sheets in West Antarctica, the most vulnerable part of the continent, have destabilized. Ice loss has sped up fivefold across the region’s most imperiled glaciers in just 25 years. Scientists … Continued
On Wednesday night, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) rejected a key certification for a controversial pipeline that would have brought loads more natural gas into New York City. This decision comes on the heels of major opposition, including a hunger strike that began the day before—all in the name of ending … Continued
PIKETON, OHIO—David and Pam Mills have grown tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and okra on their secluded Appalachian property for about 18 years now. This will be the first year the retired couple doesn’t. They just can’t trust their soil anymore. Not with what’s being built barely a five-minute walk away. Past the shed and through the … Continued
Human trash continues to pile up on every corner of the Earth at an alarming rate. And new research published on Thursday in Scientific Reports chronicles yet another frontier in our increasing plastic pollution crisis. Researchers looked at the Coco (Keeling) Islands, two small islands to the west of Australia with some of the best … Continued
Washington Governor Jay Inslee has staked his entire presidential campaign on being the country’s first climate candidate. And on Thursday, he released the second plank of his climate change platform. While the first provided a set of goals, the new addition lays out a vision for how to achieve them through $9 trillion in federal … Continued
By mid-May, California is usually leaning pretty hard into the summer dry season. But a bizarre series of storms will have weather maps looking more like winter than spring. Inches of rain, feet of snow, and gusty winds will buffet Northern California over the next week and a half. Records could be broken and it … Continued
Michelle Nestle never really understood the meaning of a flash flood until water rushed into her house in the middle of the night. It was the summer of 2017, and Hurricane Harvey was dumping a record breaking amount of rain over Houston and the surrounding areas like Hitchcock, where Nestle and her family lived. The … Continued
Scattered clouds gave the sunlight a dreamy quality. Still, it got caught in the ripples of the sluggish river, giving it a slight shimmer as it flowed through the city. The mercury cracked 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Basically the same scenes played out 5,400 miles apart, but while it was just another May day in New … Continued
On the south coast of Puerto Rico, a five-story mountain of coal ash once sat in the town of Guayama. It’s contaminated the surrounding drinking water with things like boron, lithium, and sulfate—all dangerous to human health above certain levels. Now, all that ash, a byproduct of coal production, is being shipped to a county … Continued
Atmospheric carbon dioxide sets a new record every year. This year’s cracked the ominous milestone of 415 parts per million (ppm) thanks to ever rising emissions from human activities. The sharp rise might seem like something nobody could’ve predicted but there’s at least one group of scientists that were on the money 37 years ago: … Continued
The smallest porpoise on Earth is facing an imminent extinction event. At this moment, if aggressive action is immediately taken, experts believe the vaquita may still have a chance to survive. If nothing changes, by 2020, it could spell the end of this charismatic porpoise. With dark-lined eyes and inky, upturned lips, the vaquita has … Continued
Monsanto Co. lost a legal battle over its massively popular Roundup herbicide on Monday to the tune of $2.055 billion, with a jury in San Francisco ordering the court to pay out the stunning sum to a couple that said it caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That figure, which consists of $2 billion in punitive damages and … Continued