Earth Wise

Mothballed military outposts with piles of rusting oil drums are not an unusual sight in Greenland.  There are about 30 abandoned military installations in Greenland and diesel that was once used to operate generators and other machinery has, in many cases, seeped into the ground. Removing tons of contaminated soil from these sites is incredibly […]

Sunscreen from beachgoers entering ocean waters is one of the greatest threats to coral reefs and there are global efforts to reduce or eliminate the use of many of the most harmful chemicals people use to protect themselves from the sun’s rays.  However, scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute have found that some corals […]

The Covid-19 pandemic saw most of us making use of take-out or delivery services as our only access to restaurant food.  It was a valuable link to normal life.  But unfortunately, the packaging of takeout food is a major contributor to the global plastic waste problem that isn’t going to disappear just because people are […]

While the Pacific Northwest was setting new records for high temperatures in June, many other places across the globe also experienced unprecedented heat.  Places in Russia and Scandinavia, including locations above the Arctic Circle, set new records for temperature. The heatwave in Europe was the result of a persistent northward bulge in the polar jet […]

According to new analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, global sales of gas-powered cars may well have peaked in 2017, representing a significant milestone in the transition to electric vehicles. Demand for gas cars dropped in 2018 and 2019, and then plummeted in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.  While sales are surely […]

The sun is the primary source of energy on the earth.  Enough solar energy hits the earth in one hour to meet all of human civilization’s energy needs for an entire year.  The two leading forms of renewable energy – photovoltaic solar power and wind power – are ways of making use of the sun’s […]

Plastic pollution in the oceans is a major problem.  An estimated 8 million tons of plastic trash enters the ocean every year.  Most of it is broken up by sun and waves into microplastics, which are tiny bits that ride currents for hundreds or thousands of miles.  All of this debris is harmful to marine […]

A series of heatwaves from coast to coast caused June 2021 to be the hottest June on record in the U.S. The average June temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 72.6 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest June in 127 years of record keeping and breaking the previous record set in 2016 by nearly a […]

In agriculture, double-cropping is the practice of growing two or more crops or commodities on the same piece of land in the same calendar year.  In Brazil, grain production has increased more than fourfold between 1980 and 2016.  The country now stands as the world’s largest exporter of soybeans and the second largest exporter of […]

A new study by researchers from Washington State University and the University of Quebec at Montreal looked at greenhouse gas emissions from water reservoirs.  It is perhaps surprising to think that water reservoirs are a source of greenhouse gas emissions at all, but that much was already known.  The new study found that those emissions […]