Earth Wise

Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long and typically far smaller than that.  They come from a variety of sources, often from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces.  There are also microbeads, which are tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added to various health and beauty […]

Hydrogen has great potential for helping society to reach net-zero emissions.  The problem is that the most economical and established production methods for hydrogen depend heavily on fossil fuels and result in roughly a dozen kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions for every kilogram of hydrogen produced. The carbon-free way to produce hydrogen is by splitting […]

Engineers at the University of Michigan and Rice University have developed a new technology for removing boron from seawater, an important step in turning seawater into safe drinking water. Boron is a natural component of seawater that remains a toxic contaminant in drinking water after conventional filters remove salts from seawater.  The boron levels in […]

After seven months of waiting following the end of the recent El Niño condition, La Niña finally showed up in the eastern Pacific Ocean in early December. El Niño and La Niña are climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that can affect weather worldwide.  Normally, trade winds in the Pacific blow west along the equator, […]

Naysayers about renewable energy often claim that it is unreliable.  It is true that the sun sets every night and sometimes the wind doesn’t blow.  But with the growing use of battery banks to store excess power generated by renewables, the lack of reliability of renewable energy is turning out to be a myth. A […]

A new study by Swiss and Austrian scientists has found that persistent multi-year droughts have become increasingly common since 1980 and will continue to proliferate as the climate warms. There are multiple examples in recent years in places ranging from California to Mongolia to Australia.  Fifteen years of persistent megadrought in Chile have nearly dried […]

Plants absorb nutrients and minerals from the soil as they grow and incorporate them into their leaves and stems.  Such plants can be used to remove toxic elements from soil.  Cleaning soil in this way is called phytoremediation.  Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are trying to go beyond phytoremediation and do phytomining, in […]

Wholesale coffee prices hit record highs in the midst of the Trump administration’s deportation and tariff dispute with Colombia.  But coffee prices have already been trading near 50-year highs for a while as a result of shortages related to extreme weather and increased global demand. In recent years, repeated droughts and flooding have put pressure […]

Nearly all wind turbines in use today are horizonal axis wind turbines.  They are a familiar sight with their three giant rotor blades spinning about an axis high above the ground attached to a nacelle containing the gearbox and generator.  A vertical-axis wind turbine has its rotor shaft transverse to the wind; that is, the […]

Permafrost covers about a quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere.  It stores vast quantities of organic carbon in the form of dead plant matter.  As long as it stays frozen, it is no threat to the climate.  But as permafrost thaws, microorganisms start breaking down that plant matter and large amounts of carbon […]