As you may know, PlanetSave posts important health stories as well as the popular science, nature, and climate reports we’re usually known for. (In fact, we’re working toward 500 health posts over these few years!) Today we excerpt from Examiner.com some news that follows up our Ebola story and exclusive interview with public health expert Vince Silenzio
Here’s one of the funniest ways to tell world time that I have ever seen. I call it “Dial-a-Time,” although that’s not the official name for it. (The official name is “xkcd.com/1335/”.) First of all, with this graphic you have to get used to the fact that you are looking at the world from Antarctica
If you haven’t seen the origami robot yet, you’re in for a fantastic surprise! Evoking the potential of an ancient and wonderful Japanese art, these crawling robots can self-assemble from flat-pack designs and autonomously perform. Inspired by self-assembly in nature—such as the way complex proteins with sophisticated functions derive from folding linear sequences of amino
“Equal Time” On Global Warming. Otherwise known as “False Balance.” Thanks to Tandberg, as shown on delhigreens.com!
Australian Conservation Foundation, this is true in the northern hemisphere as well. We salute your notion of intelligent life!
Thanks, Isaac Asimov, for yet another snippet of true science humor! (Photoon from I f*cking Love Science.)
Though we try to keep a very positive focus here, PlanetSave isn’t just a blog about the wonders of the natural world and the glory of Mankind’s inventions. It also offers knowledge and a caution about our failures as individuals and as a species. We’ve all made mistakes before, big and small. By acknowledging anthropogenic
On his blog “I see a change,” Nigerian Youth Development Expert Olumide Idowu presents the elements of sustainable development (source: olumideidowu.blog.com). Not all online courses provide all they promise you, but here’s one that should answer all your questions about environmentally sustainable, socially inclusive economic development. It will also challenge you to find out more.
Thoracosaurus neocesariensis, a fossil crocodile that lived 65 million to 100 million years ago, when the oceans were higher, in the ancient warm, carbon-dioxide-rich mangrove swamps of present-day southern New Jersey. Crocodiles have been chasing fish for a very, very long time–since the Late Cretaceous, in fact–says paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara of Philadelphia’s Drexel University. The
A LifeWay Research survey found that 54% of Protestant pastors disagreed with a statement saying that global warming is real and man made. This figure was lower than for the same survey conducted in 2010 when it was 60%. Democratic pastors mostly agreed that global warming is real and man made, while their Republican counterparts
New research into the continued decline of glaciers around the planet is not new, yet nevertheless these studies remain critically important to understanding our impact upon the environment and the sort of world we will be living in ten years from now. The most comprehensive review of Andean glacier observations to date was conducted by
Using observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have discovered that Titan — Saturn’s largest moon — has dunes of hydrocarbon sand which are slowly but steadily filling the impact craters left on the moon’s surface, giving it a deceptively younger appearance than its brothers and
Understanding the future of sea-level rise has been at the forefront of climate scientists’ minds for years now, and new research studying fossilised marine animals found in Antarctica’s seabed sediments are providing new clues as to what we might expect from a melting Antarctica. The immediate conclusion of the research is that the melting changes
That temperature records are being broken at an all-time high is probably not ground breaking news to anyone who has been paying a modicum of attention to the news lately. However the rate at which we have been breaking records is frighteningly distressing. According to new research, monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent,
Climate changes poses a problem for many species of animal on our planet. As environments shift, animals will need to follow their preferred climate. New research points out that the current rate of climate change up until 2080 will actually benefit most mammals that currently live in northern Europe’s Arctic and sub-Arctic land areas, but
New research results from a team led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta of Rice University have shown that magma forms much deeper than geologists had previously thought. The scientists put minute samples of peridotite – a rock derived from Earth’s mantle – under very high pressures in a laboratory and found that the rock can and does liquify
Science is awesome! A team of scientists made up from nine separate countries and led by Victoria University have successfully drilled through 760 metres of ice to reach bedrock on the Antarctic island of Roosevelt Island in the Ross Sea. The project was led by Dr. Nancy Bertler of Victoria University’s Antarctic Research Centre and
The natural conclusion is that as global warming gets worse so too will the droughts. We’ve even had evidence of it, right? Droughts in Australia, the US, and horribly dry conditions throughout Europe. However, new research from Princeton University and the Australian National University in Canberra suggest things may not be as cut and dried
Here’s a scientific dilemma for you to put your mind to for a moment: what do you do when you need specific readings from locations all-but impossible to reach by any traditional human means? Turns out, if you are David Holland, a professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, you recruit
A new climate diagnostic tool has revealed gale-force winds whipping around the Greenland coast are driving ocean circulation by affecting ocean waters, deep sea currents and sea ice behaviour. “We now have a more complete understanding of the complexity of the climate system,” says Moore, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Physical
Here’s one of those science stories that seem to make no sense on the surface: according to new research Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) increased snowfall over Antarctica as a result of climate change is actually countered by an increase in ice-flow to the ocean, up to three times. Thus, Antarctica’s contribution
It might sound counter-intuitive, but a new study has shown that removing sea defences and allowing natural erosion may in fact in times of rising sea level flooding. Robert Nicholls, Professor of Coastal Engineering at the University of Southampton and co-author of this study, says the research shows that protecting our coastline from erosion simply
The spectacular Columbia Glacier in Alaska is expected to halt its retreat in 2020 when it reaches a new stable position approximately 15 miles upstream from the stable position it had held prior the 1980s. Currently 425 square miles, the multi-branched Columbia Glacier will halt at a new stable position in 2020, and measuring in
Predicting when an ecosystem is likely to collapse has benefits for foretelling crises in agriculture, fisheries and even social systems, and scientists from the University of Southampton in the UK are pioneering a new technique that may be able to do just that. The research applies a mathematical model to a real world situation, in
The small Indian town of Leh was struck by flash flooding on the night of August 5, 2010, which left 193 dead, hundreds missing, thousands homeless, and caused severe damage throughout the town. During the 24 hour period of the flash flooding the rainfall in the area measured 8 inches, when the average for the whole
Geoengineering has been a hot topic over the past little while and into this mix has come a new study looking at the possibility of using solar geoengineering to counter the loss of Arctic sea ice by tailoring geoengineering by region and by need. A team of leading researchers developed a new computer model
Market research forecasts are almost never correct, but decent ones do give a good sense for how things are likely to change in various industries. I’ve found that Pike Research does a pretty good job of conducting cleantech market research reports. Its latest is on the growth of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations around
The North Atlantic warming and cooling cycles are known as the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO) and new research from the University of Reading suggests that the warming cycle that has been in place since the 1990s may be the cause of the wetter summers the UK and northern Europe have been encountering lately. Published in
It’s too late! We’re all going to die! So says the latest research to be published in the respected journal Environmental Research Letters. OK. I might be jumping to a bit of a dramatic conclusion there. In fact, the study in question has shown that the levels of greenhouse gasses we have already pumped into the
Scientists are excited over an inadvertent discovery using instruments aboard the new Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP, a joint venture between NASA and NOAA. The satellite is actually sensitive enough to detect clouds and other objects in the nighttime sky from space, what to the human eye would simply be complete darkness. Such a discovery
A new study conducted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found that there is more than enough power in our planet’s winds to be a primary source of near zero emissions, but that also the power generation necessary to support current and future demand would not substantially affect the climate. Climate scientists and collaborators
New research by scientists has found that biodiversity on Earth actually increases as the planet warms. However, importantly, this growth is observed in the evolution of new species over millions of years and is most often accompanied by the extinction of other species.
The present trend of accelerated warming is not likely to boost global biodiversity, rather, it is set to destroy it.
Charles Darwin was right, again, but this time his predictions focused on a somewhat different genre than we normally associate with the man; this time, it’s the ocean. Researchers have found that Darwin may in fact have been right on the money when he labelled the Eastern Pacific Barrier (EPB) “impassable” in the 1880s. The
If you look at the Caribbean islands from above you’ll see that they arc, and new research by geophysicists at the University of Southern California have found that over the past 50 million years the Caribbean islands have been pushed east by the steady movement of the Earth’s viscous mantle against the more stationary Southern
The 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has already revealed several big stories regarding alternative fuels for transport, but it has also given Nobel Prize winning scientist, Mario J. Molina, Ph.D. a platform from which to explain why he believes there is new scientific proof linking extreme weather to climate change. “People may not
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey studying ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt’s Nile Delta have documented the region’s ancient droughts and fires, including a massive drought that happened approximately 4,200 years ago and is thought to have seen the demise of Egypt’s Old Kingdom. “Humans have a long history
The Tibetan Plateau is the planet’s highest and largest plateau and has been the focus of scientific study for decades. In a new study, published online in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers have discovered that the growth of high topography such as the Tibetan mountains and plateau began much earlier than was previously understood. “Most researchers
Most years would see us waiting until early September before we received notification of any record of Greenlandic melting being broken or not, but this year we get the news early! Four weeks early, in fact, according to Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York, who has
A new study has been published which analyses a decade’s worth of tropical cyclones and found that, when a hurricane blows over ocean regions high in freshwater content, it can unexpectedly intensify.
The probability that a hurricane will ever encounter such conditions is relatively low, ranging from 10 to 23 percent, but the effect when it does happen is relatively large: Hurricanes can intensify by up to 50 percent.
Scientists from the University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences have announced a major breakthrough in a decades old debate, the understanding of our planet’s climate machine, by reconstructing a highly accurate record of changes in ice volume and deep-ocean temperatures over the last 1.5 million years. The results of this study offer insights into a
The snowball Earth hypothesis suggests that at some point approximately 715 million years ago our planet’s surface was totally – or as close as can be – covered in ice. Scientists had assumed that the glaciers covering the surface of the planet were stable, acting as a like for greenhouse gases that built up from
Planet Earth’s oceans, forests, and other assorted ecosystems are continuing to soak up approximately half the carbon dioxide we humans pump into the atmosphere every day, even as those emissions continue to increase, once again belying the very little knowledge we currently have of our planet. “Globally, these carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ have roughly kept pace
The Greenland Ice Sheet is of major concern to scientists the world over in a world that is warming rapidly and causing massive ice melt to occur. However, recent research has shown that the Greenland Ice Sheet may in fact be more robust and dynamic than previously thought. The research was conducted by the University of
Western North America suffered chronic drought from 2000 to 2004, causing forests to die, river basins to dry up. It was the strongest drought seen in 800 years. Sadly, it could also become the “new normal” in the coming decades; the “good old days”. A group of ten researchers published their findings in the journal Nature
British and Australian researchers working on data collected over a ten-year period from robotic probes wandering around the Southern Ocean have discovered an important method of how carbon is drawn from the surface of the Southern Ocean to the deeper waters below. The research shows that carbon is not drawn down uniformly by the ocean
New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen has shown that the rise in temperature after the last ice age into the warmer intergrlacial period was followed closely by a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, contrary to previously held opinion. The research was published in the journal Climate of the Past and showed
Following the catastrophic explosion and subsequent spill of oil from the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, scientists have embarked upon a 3-week expedition aboard the R/V Walton Smith to determine how surface ocean currents near the site influence the fate and transport of pollutants. This research is an important next step in understanding
Scientists have discovered the cause for rapid sea level rise in two specific historic events using climate and ice sheet models. The process, known as saddle-collapse, was at the heart of two specific sea level rise events: the Meltwater pulse 1a (MWP1a) around 14,600 years ago and the ‘8,200 year’ event. The research, published in the
