Earth Wise

The heat beneath the earth represents a vast repository of energy that in principle could provide for a significant part of our needs.  In some places, geothermal energy is easy to get to and is already being exploited.  California and Nevada operate dozens of geothermal electric generating plants.  Boise Idaho heats 92 of its biggest […]

The world has been heading toward climate disaster with the effects of greenhouse gas-induced warming looming larger and larger.  But recent analysis published in Nature Climate Change offers hope that rapidly eliminating emissions could stabilize global temperatures just within a couple of decades. For quite some time, it has been assumed that further global warming […]

Norwegian energy company Equinor and its strategic partner bp have been selected by New York State to build several offshore wind power installations that will be one of the largest renewable energy projects in the United States to date.  When completed, the projects will provide 1,260 megawatts of offshore wind power from Empire Wind 2 […]

Over the previous four years, the Trump administration weakened or rolled back more than 100 rules and regulations on air, water, public lands, endangered species, and climate change.  The Biden administration has vowed to review these changes and restore the environmental protections that were removed or weakened. The process of restoring environmental protections generally fall […]

Desalination is the process of removing mineral components – notably salt – from saline water, generally seawater.  Over 16,000 desalination plants operate across 177 countries, generating 25 billion gallons of fresh water each year.  Currently, desalination accounts for about 1% of the world’s drinking water. The leading process for desalination in terms of installed capacity […]

A tipping point is a moment when a small change triggers a large and possibly irreversible response. There has been much discussion of various tipping points that could accelerate climate change in catastrophic ways.  A recent paper from researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK discusses a couple of tipping points that could […]

The worsening severity of wildfires across the globe is a major public health concern.  The pulmonary and cardiovascular consequences of wildfire smoke inhalation have been well researched and have been an increasing focus for officials in places like California, other western states, and Australia.  More recently, another public health concern has emerged related to the […]

The dramatic worldwide decline in bees and other pollinating insects represents a serious threat to the global food supply, but it isn’t really getting much attention in the mainstream news.  Close to 75% of the world’s crops for human consumption depend, at least in part, on pollinators for sustained production, yield, and quality. A new […]

A recent study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, found that one-third of large American rivers have had significant changes of color over the past 30 years.  Rivers can appear to be shades of blue, green, and yellow and we tend to expect healthy rivers to have colors in shades of blue.  According to the new […]

Crocodiles today look very similar to ones from the Jurassic period some 200 million years ago.  In fact, there are very few species of crocodilians alive today – approximately two dozen to be exact.  Many other species have achieved a diversity of many thousands of species in the same amount of time.  During prehistoric times, […]