Earth Wise

As wind and solar energy play a growing part in our energy system, the need for grid-scale energy storage is growing as well.  An historic form of energy storage and still the largest in installed capacity is pumped hydro storage, which makes use of the potential energy contained in having water sitting at a higher […]

Emperor penguins are the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species.  The loss of sea ice in Antarctica last year has led to unprecedented breeding failure in some emperor penguin colonies. In a study published by the British Antarctic Survey, researchers found that no chicks survived from four of the five known emperor penguin […]

Last year, the monarch butterfly was officially designated as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  Estimates are that the overall population of the species has dropped between 20% and 90% over the past several decades.  The migratory western population of monarchs is at the greatest risk of extinction, having declined by as […]

Many of us are careful to put our plastic trash into the appropriate recycling bins hoping that we are helping to stem the global tide of plastic waste.  But many plastics are not recyclable at all and recycling those that are is not even always a good thing.  Breaking down plastics can generate polluting microplastics […]

There have been three offshore wind projects previously approved by utility regulators in New Jersey.  New Jersey is vying to become an East Coast leader in the fast-growing offshore wind industry and now developers have proposed four new projects off the New Jersey Shore. Two of the projects would be located far out to sea […]

Climate change is taking its toll on forests, farms, freshwater sources, and the economy, but ocean ecosystems remain the epicenter of global warming.  In fact, oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions since the 1970s. As a result, many marine fish species are responding to ocean warming by […]

A study by the University of Colorado Boulder has found that more than half of the world’s largest lakes have shrunk over the last three decades.  This is a very big problem because about one-quarter of the Earth’s population lives in the basin of a drying lake.  People depend on lakes for drinking water and […]

Getting humanity to stop dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere continues to be very challenging regardless of how increasingly apparent the need to do so becomes.  For this reason, climate change mitigation strategies increasingly include interventions in the form of removing carbon dioxide that is already there.  There are a variety of ways to draw […]

Insects can be found in every environment on Earth and play critical roles in the planet’s ecosystems.  Insects pollinate more than 80% of plants, including those that we eat and those that provide food and habitat for other species.  Without insects, we wouldn’t have the rich biodiversity that supports life on earth today. But the […]

When corals are exposed to extended periods of excess heat, they are subject to bleaching, which occurs when they expel the algae that live within their structure.  Bleaching can lead to coral death. This summer, temperatures in the Florida Keys crossed the bleaching threshold in mid-June and remained above it for extended periods of time.  […]