Earth Wise

Human activity – especially agriculture – has altered 70% of the land on our planet.  According to a new report from the United Nations, damage to the Earth’s lands has put the planet on “crisis footing”. Our health, our economy, and our well-being depend on land.  The food we eat, the water we drink, and […]

Climate change is taking a toll on forests, farms, freshwater resources, and economies all around the world.  But ocean ecosystems remain the center of global warming. Despite their vast ability to absorb heat and carbon dioxide, oceans are warming.  In fact, according to scientists, the oceans have absorbed 90% of all the warming that has […]

Eastern monarch butterflies spend their winter months in central Mexico.   Every spring, they embark on a lengthy, multigenerational migration that takes them into the United States and even into southern Canada, where they breed.  The butterflies go through several generations before they eventually migrate back to Mexico. Twenty-five years ago, overwintering monarchs in Mexico blanketed […]

The auto industry is making a massive transition from gas-powered cars to electric cars.  The exploding electric vehicle market has set off what some call a global battery arms race.  Battery manufacturers are urgently trying to source the raw materials needed to make batteries, which presently include cobalt, nickel, graphite, and lithium.  There is encouraging […]

Red pandas are small mammals native to the mountainous forests of China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar.  Unlike their name suggests, they are not related to giant pandas.  In fact, red pandas are distant relatives of raccoons. Renowned for their tree-climbing abilities, red pandas live at moderately high elevations in the Himalayas where they forage […]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that carbon dioxide levels measured in May at the Mauna Loa Observatory reached a value of 421 parts per million.  This is 50% greater than pre-industrial levels and is in a range not seen on earth for millions of years. Before the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels fairly steadily […]

The Galapagos Islands are famous for their tortoises, among many other things. A few million years ago, some giant tortoises from South America were somehow carried across hundreds of miles of ocean to the islands – perhaps on driftwood during storms.  Tortoises don’t swim, so any that made to an island could only breed with […]

Managing an electrical grid that utilizes significant amounts of intermittent generation sources – solar and wind power – brings with it some unique challenges.  There are abundant wind resources in this country and more and utilities are taking advantage of these resources.   But there are times when there is more wind, times when there is […]

In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of the global decline in insect abundance.  A recently published survey of the abundance of flying insects in the UK has revealed very troubling results. The Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife – two UK-based conservation groups – compared the number of dead insects on vehicles in 2004 […]

The Arctic permafrost contains a massive amount of carbon in the form of frozen soil, which contains remnants of plants and animals that died millennia ago.  Estimates are that there is 2 ½ times as much carbon trapped in this Arctic soil than there is in total in the atmosphere today. As the Arctic warms, […]