Author: Joshua S Hill

The most recent poll from USA Today and Gallup has shown a dramatic increase in America’s desire to protect the environment.

This comes only a few months after the last such poll which saw a desire for energy production to take priority over environmental conservation by 7 percentage points. Now that margin has swung back in favour of the environment with a clear 16 percentage point gap in the environments favour.

It comes as little surprise considering the catastrophic oil spill taking place in the Gulf of Mexico, and highlights the fickle nature of the American public who seem only to care about the environment when there is a grave national threat or someone to blame. (more…)

Three days after reaching the summit of Mount Everest for the 20^th time Apa Sherpa has described Mount Everest as more dangerous to climb thanks to climate change.

Apa Sherpa, nicknamed the “super Sherpa” for the apparent ease with which he makes the climb, helping him to break his own record by making a 20^th ascent of the world’s highest peak, dedicated his latest climb to raising awareness of the impact of climate change in the Himalayas.

“The snow along the slopes had melted, exposing the bare rocks underneath, which made it very difficult for us to walk up the slope as there was no snow to dig our crampons into,” he told AFP on Tuesday. “This has made the trail very dangerous for all climbers.” (more…)

New research of trees in northwest Africa has revealed droughts in the latter part of the 20^th century are some of the fiercest experienced in that area.

The research looked at tree rings in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and found that there have been frequent and severe droughts during the 13^th and 16^th centuries, as well as in the latter part of the 20^th century.

A team of scientists from several countries used the information provided by tree rings to look back to the year 1179. One tree from Morocco dates all the way back to the year 883, while many of the oldest trees sampled contain climate data dating all the way back to the medieval period. (more…)

Scientists have estimated that there is a one-in-three chance that a mega-earthquake will hit the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years.

However residents of the small town of Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast are well aware they’re in the firing line of an earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, and they’re preparing. Wokring together with experts from Oregon State University, the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industry and local residents, the small town is looking to create a town hall that will act as a tsunami proof building.

“In all but the most catastrophic scenarios, it’s been estimated that the water level from an incoming tsunami at the site we propose to build the new city hall could be up to 15 feet,” said Jay Raskin, a local architect and one of the community leaders working to create the new structure. “We think this building could shelter at least 1,500 people. It will cost more, but so far there has been a pretty positive public reaction to the idea.” (more…)

Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair has joined a Silicon Valley business as a senior environmental adviser.

Blair will be joining Khosla Ventures, a firm started by Sun Microsystems Inc., co-founder Vinod Khosla. The company has been investing in companies that are themselves pursuing alternative fuel strategies and other environmentally focused technologies.

“[Blair] is going to help us in many areas that technie nerds like us here in Silicon Valley don’t understand and tend to underestimate the importance of,” Khosla said. (more…)

The fight is on to save one of East Africa’s most treasured national resources.

“If the Mau Forest is destroyed, Kenya will die,” said scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Wangari Maathai of the University of Nairobi.

Together with scientists from the University of Copenhagen and the grass-roots Green Belt Movement, the Wangari Maathai Institute of Peace and Environmental Studies at the University of Nairobi is hoping to find concrete solutions to the issues being faced. (more…)

Unlike the storms swirling around the gas giant of Jupiter, Earth’s storms are affected by the oceans and mountains.

Science will often, in an effort to simplify and provide a reference point, compare findings here on Earth with disparate examples elsewhere, either on the planet or off. A group of scientists looking to understand how storm tracks work here on Earth looked to the smooth surface of Jupiter to form a base of comparison.

Computer simulations that depicted Earth in several formations led scientists to find that there is a comparable effect on the storm tracks made by ocean dynamics and mountains. (more…)

The National Research Council has released three reports focusing on why the US should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and form a coherent plan to deal with the changing climate.

“These reports show that the state of climate change science is strong,” said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “But the nation also needs the scientific community to expand upon its understanding of why climate change is happening, and focus also on when and where the most severe impacts will occur and what we can do to respond.”

The first of these reports, Advancing the Science of Climate Change focuses on what we know of climate change while acknowledging what we don’t know, and puts forward the need for a single federal entity to be given authority and the resources to coordinate a national and multidisciplinary research effort. (more…)

The National Research Council has released three reports focusing on why the US should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and form a coherent plan to deal with the changing climate.

“These reports show that the state of climate change science is strong,” said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “But the nation also needs the scientific community to expand upon its understanding of why climate change is happening, and focus also on when and where the most severe impacts will occur and what we can do to respond.”

The second of the reports notes that a “departure from business as usual” is going to be necessary to “meet internationally discussed targets for limiting atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and associated increases in global average temperatures.” (more…)

The National Research Council has released three reports focusing on why the US should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and form a coherent plan to deal with the changing climate.

“These reports show that the state of climate change science is strong,” said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “But the nation also needs the scientific community to expand upon its understanding of why climate change is happening, and focus also on when and where the most severe impacts will occur and what we can do to respond.”

The third of the reports released under the America’s Climate Choices suite of studies requested by Congress looks specifically at the impacts of climate change on America and how the U.S. can begin reacting to these changes. (more…)

NASA’s Aqua satellite has caught imagery of the sun glinting off the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

As it swept over the Gulf of Mexico the Aqua, using the onboard Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument, the satellite took the above image showing three big bright sunglints.

According to the May 18 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) web update of the Deepwater Horizon incident, “satellite imagery on May 17 indicated that the main bulk of the oil is dozens of miles away from the Loop Current, but that a tendril of light oil has been transported down close to the Loop Current.” (more…)

The mass extinction of mammal species 50,000 years ago possibly linked to continental climate footprints.

An international team of scientists used global data modelling to construct continental “climate footprints” in an effort to determine the cause of the mass extinctions that took place 50,000 years ago.

“Between 50,000 and 3,000 years before present (BP) 65% of mammal species weighing over 44kg went extinct, together with a lower proportion of small mammals,” said lead author Dr David Nogues-Bravo from the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate in University of Copenhagen. “Why these species became extinct in such large numbers has been hotly debated for over a century.” (more…)

Scientists are now closer than ever to being able to answer what is the volume of Earth’s oceans.

“A lot of water values are taken for granted,” he says. “If you want to know the water volume on the planet, you Google it and you get five different numbers, most of them 30- or 40-year-old values.”

Until now, that is.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) scientists Matthew Charette and Walter H.F. Smith have used the latest technology to not only answer how deep our oceans are, but also give the best answer yet as to the volume of our oceans. (more…)

Scientists are surprised at the speed with which Greenland’s ice is melting and the corresponding surge of the land mass beneath.

Findings published in an upcoming edition of Nature Geoscience show that the rapidly melting ice in Greenland is causing the land mass beneath to rise as the weight is lifted off the rock. According to scientists at the University of Miami, the ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace, moving up in some areas by nearly one inch per year.

If the current speed with which the land rises continues the figure could be as much as two inches per year by 2025 and see Greenland become the world’s largest contributor to sea level rise. (more…)

Schooling fish and their interaction with one another has inspired a Caltech professor to rethink how wind energy can be created.

Head of Caltech’s Biological Propulsion Laboratory John Dabiri and two of his graduate students have turned to schools of fish to further our knowledge of how wind turbines work best and how to combat the lack of space we have for the traditional horizontal-axis wind turbines most commonly seen across the landscape.

“I became inspired by observations of schooling fish, and the suggestion that there is constructive hydrodynamic interference between the wakes of neighboring fish,” said Dabiri, associate professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at Caltech. “It turns out that many of the same physical principles can be applied to the interaction of vertical-axis wind turbines.” (more…)

The worst hurricane to ever hit the United States is still being felt today.

It’s been almost 5 years since the deadliest hurricane and most expensive natural disaster in US history made landfall, and scientists are still discovering its affects. Scientists studying the hurricanes impact have shown the ecological impact and human health risks as a result of the exposed chemical containments.

According to the study, published in a special edition of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Hurricane Katrina caused significant ecological damage by altering coastal chemistry and habitat. (more…)

New research from the University of Washington indicates that one of the planet’s largest fresh-water megafloods happened some 17,000 years ago and inundated a large area of Alaska.

The comedic value of this story comes from the location of the megaflood, which flooded areas down what is now the Matanuska River in Alaska including Anchorage and Wasilla, home to the loveable Sarah Palin.

The discovery, made by Michael Wiedmer, an Achorage native who is pursuing graduate studies in forest resources at the University of Washington, is evidence of one of four megafloods that took place when Lake Atna breached her ice dams. (more…)

Scientists believe that the discovery of ice and organic molecules on an asteroid lingering in orbit between Mars and Jupiter hints at the origin of Earth’s oceans and life 4 billion years ago.

“What we’ve found suggests that an asteroid like this one may have hit Earth and brought our planet its water,” said UCF Physics Professor HumbertoCampins, the lead author of a study which will be published in the April 29 edition of the journal Nature.

Some theories posit that Earth formed dry, and that it was asteroids that brought Earth it’s water. Salts and water found in some meteorites have added credibility to the theory. (more…)

Ocean currents are one of the driving forces behind our planet’s climate, and according to Japanese and Australian scientists a new current has been discovered in the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean.

In a paper published in Nature Geoscience the researchers describe an ocean current, approximately 4,200 kilometres south-west of Perth, Australia, that is the equivalent of 40 Amazon Rivers and exists at more than three kilometres below the Ocean’s surface.

“The current carries dense, oxygen-rich water that sinks near Antarctica to the deep ocean basins further north,” says co-author Dr Steve Rintoul from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC and CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship. “Without this supply of Antarctic water, the deepest levels of the ocean would have little oxygen. (more…)

The diminishing Arctic sea ice cover has largely been blamed on climate change and human global warming. New research from Norway suggests this may not be the case.

The past 30 years have seen the ice cover surrounding the North Pole diminish significantly, specifically within the last decade. Many experts, including the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), believed that this was a direct result of man-made global warming and climate change.

Researchers from the Norwegian Component of the Ecosystem Studies of Sub-Arctic Seas (NESSAS) believe that they have discovered the real reason why there has been such a dramatic decrease in the sea ice cover around the North Pole. (more…)