Earth Wise

Mass coral bleaching events are getting increasingly frequent as the oceans continue to warm, endangering coral reefs all over the world. The damage to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been enormous and in 2015, nearly half of Hawaii’s coral reefs were affected by a severe bleaching event. Not all coral bleaching is permanent.  Corals can […]

Researchers from the Neiker Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development in Spain have demonstrated that a combination of rapeseed cake and beer bagasse can be used to reduce populations of soil parasites and increase crop yields.  Beer bagasse is spent brewers’ grain – the stuff that is left over after the beer is made.  […]

A team of researchers at Texas A&M University believes that the next generation of offshore energy could come in the form of a synergistic combination of multiple renewable energy generators installed on a floating offshore platform. Their concept for the ocean renewable energy station comprises wind, wave, ocean current, and solar energy elements that could […]

As the world seeks to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that have been warming the climate, most of the focus has been on the primary contributors to the problem, such as the burning of fossil fuels.  But there are many smaller contributors to greenhouse gas emissions that individually play only a minor role but collectively […]

Extinction is a part of life.  Plant and animal species disappear all the time.  In fact, approximately 98% of all the organisms that have ever existed on planet earth are now extinct. Earth’s so-called ‘normal’ rate of extinction is thought to be somewhere between 0.1 and 1 species per 10,000 species per 100 years.  But […]

Every summer, a so-called dead zone forms in the Gulf of Mexico.  It is primarily caused by excess nutrient pollution from human activities in urban and agricultural areas throughout the Mississippi River watershed.  When these excess nutrients reach the Gulf, they stimulate excess growth of algae, which eventually die and decompose, depleting oxygen as they […]

During the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic, private jet use saw record levels because chartered aircraft were estimated to have 30 times lower risk for covid than flying commercial.  By August 2020, while commercial flights were down 60% year-over-year, private jet traffic was actually up.  From an environmental perspective, however, flying on a private jet […]

Studies have shown that the wax and pollen in 98% of beehives in the U.S. are contaminated with an average of six pesticides.  These substances lower bees’ immunity to devastating varroa mites and other pathogens.  By some estimates, pesticides cause beekeepers to lose about a third of their hives every year on average. Researchers at […]

According to a new study recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change, more than one-third of the world’s heat-related deaths each year are attributable to human-induced climate change.  Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK  and the University of Bern in Switzerland analyzed data from 732 locations in […]

Offshore wind is booming in Europe.  The expansion of wind energy in the German Bight and Baltic Sea has been especially dramatic.  At this point, there are about 8 gigawatts of wind turbines in German waters, the equivalent of about 8 nuclear power plants.  But space in this region is limited so that wind farms […]