Earth Wise

Renewable energy may be under attack by the federal government these days, but one federal agency is making great progress on using the sun’s energy to split hydrogen from water.   The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, located in Golden, Colorado, recently highlighted two initiatives aimed at the production of renewable hydrogen. Renewable hydrogen is an enabling […]

Scientists at UC Berkeley and MIT have demonstrated a water harvester that uses only sunlight to pull liters of water out of the air each day in conditions as low as 20% humidity, a level common in arid areas. The solar-powered harvester, reported in the journal Science, makes use of a special material – a […]

Liana vines are long-stemmed, woody vines that are rooted in the soil at ground level and use trees or other means of vertical support to climb up to the canopy to gain access to sunlight.  There are numerous varieties from many plant families.  And, for reasons that are not entirely clear, their abundance has doubled […]

Sea lions in California are under duress from a rather unassuming source: algae.  Driven by higher water temperatures and pollution, toxic algae is leading to fatal brain damage in many California sea lions.  Domoic acid poisoning is emerging as a key threat this year to sea lions and other animals that ingest the toxin while […]

On several occasions, we have talked about the enormous amount of plastic that litters the world’s oceans.  Bits of bottles, bags, toys, fishing nets and other objects collect in gyres, or so-called garbage patches, which have grown and grown over the decades. A new study, published in Science Advances, shows that a major ocean current […]

Community solar is a cooperative enterprise in which customers can make use of the output of a large local array of solar panels when they are not able to install a solar power system on their own property.  The customers of a community solar system can offset as little or as much of their electrical […]

The changing climate has many effects upon the world’s ecosystems, some of which are surprising.  One of these relates to the effect of the increasing melting of ice in the Arctic.  The ice melt is leading to more life in the Arctic sea. When spring comes to the Arctic, both snow and ice melt, forming […]

There are many environmental problems associated with ruminant livestock and these problems continue to grow as the demand for meat-rich diets increases around the world.  One of the biggest problems is that cows emit methane through eructation (or belching) as they chew their cud.   Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, some 25 times more potent […]

Capturing carbon dioxide instead of releasing it into the atmosphere is a way we can use fossil fuels without it having harmful effects on the climate.  Energy storage is a way to address the volatility of clean energy sources like wind and solar power.  Excess energy stored during peak production can be used when production […]

For most of us, a day spent in the mountains, the woods, or at the beach always seems like a good day.   Communing with nature tends to make us feel better. A recent study at Oregon State University looked into this subject and their data demonstrates that a variety of mechanisms for engaging nature significantly […]