A white paper on California’s Proposition 23 finds the initiative would create legal turmoil, cut state revenue, and jeopardize clean energy jobs. Prop. 23 would also slow state efforts to reduce climate change and could have a domino effect nationwide.
The United States is in the thick of a “green trend.” Increased awareness of and commitment to sustainability and improving the environment through reduced carbon emissions and energy use have led to more consumer demand for “green” products—including green construction. Even with the downturn in the housing market, a 2008 poll showed that 91 percent of registered voters nationwide would still pay more for a house if that meant a reduced impact on the environment.
Helping understand ecosystem changes and improving restoration with soil data.
Something has been gobbling up a "doughnut" of phytoplankton in southern Lake Michigan, and it looks as though the culprit is the quagga mussel, a European mollusk about the size of a fat lima bean.
The National Institutes of Health will launch a multi-year study this fall to look at the potential health effects from the oil spill in the Gulf region.
The world’s most established fisheries certifier is failing on its promises as rapidly as it gains prominence, according to the world’s leading fisheries experts from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego and elsewhere.
The Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium announced today the launch of the New York Seascape initiative—a conservation program designed to restore healthy populations of local marine species—many of them threatened—and to protect New York City and area waters, which are vital to wildlife and key to economic and cultural vitality.
What is Agriculture’s role in greenhouse gas emissions, capture?
With a simple click of the camera, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Zoological Society of London have developed a new way to accurately monitor long-term trends in rare and vanishing species over large landscapes.
Proponents of organic farming often speak of nature's balance in ways that sound almost spiritual, prompting criticism that their views are unscientific and naïve. At the other end of the spectrum are those who see farms as battlefields where insect pests and plant diseases must be vanquished with the magic bullets of modern agriculture: pesticides, fungicides and the like.
A molecular biologist will bring dozens of tiny, transparent animals that live in Gulf Coast waters back to his campus laboratory as part of an effort to better understand the oil spill’s long-term impact on the coastal environment and creatures living there.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) are requesting that the Government of Tanzania reconsider the proposed construction of a commercial road through the world’s best known wildlife sanctuary—Serengeti National Park—and recommend that alternative routes be used that can meet the transportation needs of the region without disrupting the greatest remaining migration of large land animals in the world.
Scientists are reporting development of new soy-based glues that use a substance in soy milk and tofu and could mean a new generation of more eco-friendly furniture, cabinets, flooring and other wood products. Their study is scheduled for presentation in August at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Boston.
Sponges, including giant barrel sponges, now dominate Caribbean coral reefs. But these ancient “Redwoods of the Reefs” face stiff challenges and challengers; if they don’t prevail, habitat structure for fisheries and other animals will be lost .
Continuous research and development of alternative energy could soon lead to a new era in human history in which two renewable sources — solar and wind — will become Earth’s dominant contributor of energy, a Nobel laureate said in Boston today at a special symposium at the American Chemical Society’s 240th National Meeting.
A new study shows that male rats prenatally exposed to low doses of atrazine, a widely used herbicide, are more likely to develop prostate inflammation and to go through puberty later than non-exposed animals. The research adds to a growing body of literature on atrazine, an herbicide predominantly used to control weeds and grasses in crops such as corn and sugar cane. Atrazine and its byproducts are known to be relatively persistent in the environment, potentially finding their way into water supplies.
Using renewable solar energy and a process of solar conversion that he patented called Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo (STEP) energy conversion, Dr. Stuart Licht is able to easily extract pure metal iron from the two prevalent iron ores, hematite and magnetite, without emitting carbon dioxide.
Florida Atlantic University research projects have been selected by the Florida Institute of Oceanography Council to receive BP funding to examine the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico.
Stamp sand, an unsightly leftover from the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan's copper mining days, may prove a godsend for the roofing industry and the local economy.
Public school grounds will become environmental education laboratories when a 20-foot green and blue mobile technology trailer pulls into the parking lots at Creekside Middle School in Carmel, Ind. and dozens of other elementary and middle schools in nine Indiana counties this fall and spring.
Energy-based economic development has received little academic attention, but researchers have a rare opportunity to evaluate the potential impacts of EBED for society, says Indiana University faculty member Sanya Carley.
Even though students today are more concerned than ever about the environment, during the transition to college, those ideals often go by the wayside. Dedee DeLongpré Johnston, director of sustainability at Wake Forest University, offers these simple suggestions to achieve a “greener” move-in by doing more with less.
Exposure to organophosphate (OP) pesticides before birth can increase susceptibility to attention disorders such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to new research published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The new study is part of a growing body of research indicating that exposure to OP pesticides can adversely affect brain development.
Scientists can now study climate change in far more detail with powerful new computer software released by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The Community Earth System Model (CESM) will be one of the primary climate models used for the next assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Environmental Engineers are doing research to determine if the shape of a crude oil remnant – be it a flat syrupy sheet or a tar ball – can affect deterioration rates. The researchers also will study how a lack of oxygen can hinder microbe growth, and how carbon leaching from dissipating oil can further fuel these oil-eating microbes.
Sierra magazine has named the University of California, San Diego among the nation’s top 20 “coolest” schools for its efforts to stop global warming and operate sustainably. From the university’s new Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold and silver certified buildings to sustainable engineering classes, the magazine highlights how UC San Diego is making a true difference for the planet in the fourth annual listing of America’s greenest universities and colleges.
Reducing the runoff from plant nutrients that can eventually wash into the Chesapeake Bay could someday be as easy as checking the weather forecast, thanks in part to work by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.
With solar panels on the roof to heat water and touch screens in the hallways for monitoring energy usage, Wake Forest University’s new residence hall has the latest in green technology.
A scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, India has developed a method, described in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, to assess the installation and operating costs of small hydroelectric power projects, which represent a potentially large but largely untapped source of energy for developing countries.
While Arctic sea ice has been diminishing in recent decades, the Antarctic sea ice extent has been increasing slightly. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology provide an explanation for the seeming paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice in a warming climate.
More science needed say researchers after testing for oil in seafood from Bastian Bay, La.
This September a select group of professionals will begin training at the University of Chicago to fill an emerging position in the U.S. workforce: sustainability director. The professionals have enrolled in the Leadership in Sustainability Management Certificate Program.
Today Earth Day Network announces partners in 15 countries who will join in planting one million trees in 2010 through the Avatar Home Tree Initiative.
Arsenic in food supplements passes through chickens, then passes through the field.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are using funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy – also known as ARPA-E – to pursue two different, but related, approaches for removing carbon dioxide from the flue gases of coal-burning power plants.
When Dr. Mehdi Ferdowsi and Ph.D. student Andrew Meintz offered the inaugural class on electric and hybrid vehicles last January at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), they made an instant connection with students from a variety of engineering disciplines.
"Heat waves are a growing concern and current climate models indicate they will increase in duration and intensity especially in the mid-latitudes of which Indiana and the Midwest is a part," says climate researcher and IUPUI Professor Daniel Johnson. "Heat waves are known to kill hundreds of people in the United States every year and are the leading cause of weather-related fatalities; usually outstripping the combined effects of hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning and flash floods. "
Land development in the N.C. mountains increased 568% from 1976 to 2006, researchers at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at UNC Charlotte released in a study today. Forecasting extended to 19 N.C. mountain counties and will aid policy makers in guiding further development in the region.
As much as 12 percent of the world’s human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sustainably offset by producing the charcoal-like substance biochar, concludes a study published in the journal Nature Communications
Glaciologists who drilled through an ice cap perched precariously on the edge of a 16,000-foot-high Indonesian mountain ridge say that the ice field could vanish within in the next few years, another victim of global climate change.
Kent D. Syverud JD, dean of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and the Ethan A.H. Shepley University Professor, has been named a trustee of the $20 billion BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust.
As part of its ongoing focus to enhance diversity system wide, the University of California has asked that each of its ten campuses establish advisory councils on climate, culture and inclusion. The first meeting of the UC San Diego Council on Climate, Equity and Inclusion, chaired by Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, took place on campus Thursday, July 22. In keeping with the guidance provided by the University of California Office of the President, the Council will be advisory to the Chancellor and will comprise individuals with substantive expertise in diversity from represented constituencies including faculty, students, alumni, staff and administrators and community members. A membership roster is posted at http://campusclimate.ucsd.edu/actions.php.
Advances being made to explore outer space using solar sails were discussed by the more than 60 scientists from 12 nations who attended the Second International Symposium on Solar Sailing (ISSS 2010) held recently at New York City College of Technology (City Tech) in Downtown Brooklyn.
Technological advances developed by University of Maryland researchers promise significant reductions in urban runoff polluting the Chesapeake Bay. The researchers say their work, which dramatically improves the removal of phosphorous and nitrogen, represents the next generation of “low impact development” technologies.
Nitrogen-altering bacteria thrive under charcoal deposition.
A University of Delaware researcher reports that an “ice island” four times the size of Manhattan has calved from Greenland's Petermann Glacier. The last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk of ice was in 1962.
A 15-year experiment in an outdoor “laboratory” on Ohio State University’s campus shows that naturally colonizing wetlands can offer just as many, if not more, ecological services as will wetlands planted by humans.
Scientists at the University of Arkansas and their colleagues have found populations of wild plants with genes from genetically modified canola in the United States.
For the first time, scientists have been able to measure the amount of water that rises and falls annually in the Amazon River floodplain.
It has been widely reported that the build up of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air, which is caused by human behavior, will likely lead to climate change and have major implications for life on earth. But less focus has been given to global warming’s evil twin, ocean acidification, which occurs when CO2 lowers the pH of water bodies, thus making them more acidic. This lesser known phenomenon may have catastrophic effects on all sea life.
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