Once in the ocean, where does the plastic *go*?
Nature surveys the plastic in the seas, expects to see things like detergent bottles and Barbies breaking up into tiny “microplastic” particles, and doesn’t. So […]
ecology
Blue whales have recovered, just about.
It’s taken quite a while, but AP can finally report that blue whales off the coast of California have finally reached pre-whaling-industry levels: Researchers previously […]
Lone Star? Windmill! Green energy booms in Texas.
Scientific American lauds the state long linked with oil money for breaking wind power production records: The Lone Star State hit “peak wind” at 8:48 […]
Enough garbage to hide a jumbo jet.
That, National Geographic has come out and said, is the sorry state of our oceans, as the ongoing search for Malaysian Airlines 370 has tragically […]
Buildings kill just about one billion birds a year.
Ecowatch reveals how our cities act as killing machines, with a new study that’s determined that buildings kill nearly one billion birds every year: In […]
Zombie sex-change pollution
I’m pretty sure Nature is blazing a new B-movie trail with this report on hormone-disrupting chemicals “rising from the dead”: Environmental scientists have discovered that […]
Utopia or catastrophe: How long do civilizations live? (And how can we find another?)
Those questions were raised in, of all publications, Astrobiology Magazine. Why are astrobiologists so concerned about human culture? Because if civilizations can really die out, […]
M&M waste gives bees honey of different colors.
French beekeepers, Russia Today tells us, were mystified when their hives started producing rainbow-colored honey – but were even more concerned when they found out […]
The reefs are collapsing.
Guardian takes a look underwater, and what it sees (and, more importantly, what scientists are seeing) really doesn’t look good: The decline of the reefs […]
More wolves, more trees.
File this Washington Post story under “unintended consequences,” maybe. Researchers in Yellowstone Park are noting that as wolf populations are rebounding, the number of trees […]
Test-tube steak will save Earth.
PhysOrg hops on the in-vitro meat bandwagon with a study that concludes lab-grown meat will lower greenhouse gas emissions by 96 percent: The analysis, carried […]
Fertile Antarctica
I know I already kinda wrote a song about this (and isopods), but still – the Mother Nature Network has joined the voices marveling over […]
Mangroves save us. (If we save them.)
Nature reports on a hidden side of wetlands conservation, with the discovery that those snorkel-rooted mangrove trees – which are getting pretty scarce most places […]
Mass Extinction #6
The death of the dinosaurs was just a drop in the bucket compared to some of the real mass extinction events out there. And PhysOrg […]
Frogs might make it after all.
New Scientist offers hope that our amphibian friends might not all die horribly after all: “It’s happening across a number of species,” says Michael Mahony […]