Earth Wise

Wyoming produces about 40% of our country’s coal and many towns in the state were built because of and make their living from it.  With coal’s plummeting share in the nation’s electricity, there is a great deal of anxiety among residents of those towns. As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to climb, there […]

In December, the Department of Energy announced that scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California had achieved a breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology.  Fusion is the process by which the sun generates energy.  If we had the means to produce nuclear fusion in a controlled fashion, it would be an almost limitless source of […]

There are a variety of schemes for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Some require advanced and generally not-very-well developed technology.  Others, such as planting vast numbers of trees, are nature-based but are daunting with respect to the scale to which they need to take place in order to be truly effective. Researchers at the […]

Cities are awash in microscopic soot and other pollutants from the tailpipes of vehicles.  Apart from contributing substantially to the warming of the planet, these emissions have a significant impact on human health.  Research at Cornell University has determined that the continued growth of electric cars will lead to cleaner air and reduced human mortality […]

Roughly three-quarters of the world population has access to a safely managed water source.  That means that one-in-four people do not have access to safe drinking water.  Even in the wealthy United States, persistent drought in the west is creating problems in places like Phoenix, Arizona. Water is plentiful on Earth but more than 99% […]

The UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal in December concluded with a historic deal aimed at stemming the rising tide of extinctions.  Nearly 200 countries signed on to the agreement to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and sea by the end of this decade. Part of the agreement also pledges that countries will reduce fertilizer […]

According to a recent report by the International Energy Agency, worldwide growth in renewable power capacity is set to double in the next five years.  In fact, by 2027, the world will add as much renewable power as it did over the previous 20 years. Of particular significance is that renewables are going to overtake […]

La Niña is an oceanic phenomenon consisting of cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropic Pacific.  It is essentially the opposite of the better-known El Niño.   These sea-surface phenomena affect weather across the globe.  As one oceanographer put it:  when the Pacific speaks, the whole world listens. There is currently a […]

Researchers from Cornell University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that the continual warming in the world over the past 25 years has been reducing the amount of oxygen in many lakes. Data from more than 400 lakes – mostly in the United States – shows that lakes with dissolved oxygen losses strongly outnumber those […]

There is lots of interest in traction.  People want to find better ways to move across wet and frozen surfaces safely.   This applies to both the shoes on our feet and the tires on our cars.  Researchers at the University of Akron along with colleagues at Syracuse University and at Bridgestone, the tire company, have […]