Earth Wise

The global climate is a complicated thing.  While overall trends are relatively straightforward to understand, the details can seem confusing. January was the sixth-warmest January in the 143 years of global climate record keeping.  The global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. Meanwhile, the United States had […]

Recent research has found that some of the highest levels of mercury pollution ever recorded are in a patch of pristine Amazonian rainforest.  The international team of researchers discovered that illegal goldmining in the Peruvian Amazon is the source of the pollution. Illegal miners separate gold particles from river sediments using mercury.  Mercury binds to […]

Tourism has experienced exponential growth during the past 70 years.  In 1950, there were 25 million international tourist arrivals.  By 1990, it had ballooned to 435 million.  Between 1990 and 2018, the numbers more than tripled reaching more than 1.4 billion.  And by 2030, the number of international tourist arrivals is expected to reach 1.8 […]

Scientists have estimated that there are more than 8 million species of plants and animals in existence.  Amazingly, only about 1.2 million of them have been identified and described so far and most of those are actually insects.  Millions of other organisms have yet to be discovered. One would imagine that most of these unknown […]

There are 130,000 documented abandoned oil and gas wells in the US, according to the Department of the Interior.  The key word is documented.  According to an EPA study in 2018, the actual number of abandoned wells could be as high as two or three million.  According to an analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund […]

In Antarctica, a huge chunk of the Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed suddenly and spectacularly in January. The Larsen Ice Shelf is located on the northeastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula on the Weddell Sea.  It was formed over the course of more than 12,000 years.  The Weddell Sea used to be a completely frozen […]

The United Kingdom has some of the most detailed records of seasonal changes anywhere in the world.  Since the 18th century, observations of seasonal changes have been recorded by scientists, naturalists, amateur and professional gardeners, and organizations such as the Royal Meteorological Society.  Researchers at two British institutions have collected and collated these records into […]

As carbon dioxide levels continue to increase in the atmosphere and emissions reductions aren’t happening as fast as needed, there is growing interest in carbon capture and storage technologies. The idea is to capture the CO2 emitted from industrial processes or from the burning of fossil fuels in power generation, and then permanently store it […]

Last year was a year that saw rising temperatures and rising levels of greenhouse gases.  2021 was the fifth-hottest year on record.  The average global temperature was nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius or 2.1 Fahrenheit degrees higher than the preindustrial average.  The past seven years were the hottest ever by a significant margin. The concentration of […]

Movies were not the first industry to boom in Los Angeles.  Oil was.  There was a lot of it, and it flowed close to the surface triggering rampant drilling all over the area.  By the 1920s, Los Angeles was one of the largest oil-exporting regions in the world. A century later, there are over 20,000 […]