24 May 2013: Majority of Earth’s Population Faces Water Shortages by Mid-Century A conference of 500 of the world’s leading water scientists issued a stark declaration at the end of a four-day meeting in Germany, warning that within two generations a majority of the people on the plan...
Research on Microbes Points To New Tools for Conservation Improvements in DNA technology now make it possible for biologists to identify every living organism in and around a species. Scientists say this could have profound implications for everything from protecting amphibians from a...
21 May 2013: Large Majority of Americans Believe Global Warming Should be a Priority Roughly 70 percent of Americans say global warming should be a priority for President Obama and Congress and 61 percent support requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax that would be used t...
U.S. businesswoman Katherine Lucey is working with a network of women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa to sell inexpensive, household solar energy systems. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Lucey explains how solar electricity can transform lives, particularly those of rur...
A Plague of Deforestation Sweeps Across Southeast Asia Illegal logging and unchecked economic development are taking a devastating toll on the forests of Vietnam and neighboring countries, threatening areas of biodiversity so rich that 1,700 species have been discovered in the last 15...
In Post-Tsunami Japan, A Push To Rebuild Coast in Concrete In the wake of the 2011 tsunami, the Japanese government is forgoing an opportunity to sustainably protect its coastline and is instead building towering concrete seawalls and other defenses that environmentalists say will inf...
15 May 2013: Glaciers on Everest Disappearing As Temperatures Rise, Snowfall Declines The glaciers on Mount Everest and the surrounding region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last five decades as temperatures have risen and snowfall has declined in that section of the Himalaya, accor...
Son of Climate Science Pioneer Ponders A Sobering Milestone Climate scientist Ralph Keeling has followed in the footsteps of his father, who pioneered the measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, the younger Keeling talks about the im...
True Nature: Revising Ideas On What is Pristine and Wild New research shows that humans have been transforming the earth and its ecosystems for millenniums — far longer than previously believed. These findings call into question our notions about what is unspoiled nature and what shou...
10 May 2013: U.S. Web Tool Aims to Bolster Research on Climate and Health Links The Obama Administration this week introduced an online tool to improve research into the link between climate change and human health and promote innovative responses to future threats. As climate change ...
09 May 2013: Third Coal Export Proposal Falls By Wayside in Pacific Northwest A large U.S. pipeline developer has dropped plans to build a $200-million coal export facility in northern Oregon, the third major terminal proposal to be shelved or canceled in the Pacific Northwest. Offici...
How Mussel Farming Could Help to Clean Fouled Waters Along the shores of New York Harbor, scientists are investigating whether this ubiquitous bivalve can be grown in urban areas as a way of cleansing coastal waters of sewage, fertilizers, and other pollutants. by paul greenberg Not l...
07 May 2013: Battery-Equipped Wind Turbine Better Integrates Green Energy Onto Grid General Electric recently introduced a wind turbine equipped with a storage battery, creating a type of “hybrid” turbine that industry leaders hope will improve the integration of intermittent energy s...
Will Lead Bullets Finally Kill Off the California Condor? The California condor, the largest bird in North America, was saved from extinction by a captive breeding program that increased its numbers in the wild. But now the condor is facing a new and pernicious threat — the lead from ...
06 May 2013: Solar-Powered Airplane Finishes First Leg of Coast-to-Coast U.S. Trip A Swiss pilot this weekend completed the first portion of a five-leg trip across the U.S. in an airplane powered by solar energy . The so-called Solar Impulse aircraft, which runs on energy collected fr...
03 May 2013: Seawater Energy Technology Is Focus of Pilot Project in China The U.S. defense and aerospace giant, Lockheed Martin, is partnering with a major Chinese company to build a pilot project off the southern Chinese coast that will use temperature differentials between the deep...
02 May 2013: Five Southeast Asian Nations Have Lost One-Third of Forests in 33 Years Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam have lost one-third of their forests since 1980 and could be left with only 10 to 20 percent of their original forest cover by 2030, according to a revie...
A Key Experiment to Probe the Future of Our Acidifying Oceans In a Swedish fjord, European researchers are conducting an ambitious experiment aimed at better understanding how ocean acidification will affect marine life. Ultimately, these scientists hope to determine which species mig...
Revered for its beauty and its longevity, the ginkgo is a living fossil, unchanged for more than 200 million years. Botanist Peter Crane, who has a written what he calls a biography of this unique tree, talks to Yale Environment 360 about the inspiring history and cultural significanc...
Declining Bee Populations Pose A Threat to Global Agriculture The danger that the decline of bees and other pollinators represents to the world’s food supply was highlighted this week when the European Commission decided to ban a class of pesticides suspected of playing a role in so-c...
Fires Burn More Fiercely As Northern Forests Warm From North America to Siberia, rising temperatures and drier woodlands are leading to a longer burning season and a significant increase in forest fires. Scientists warn that this trend is expected continue in the years ahead. by dylan...
24 Apr 2013: New Web Site to Track CO2 Levels As Planet Approaches 400 PPM As atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide approach the milestone of 400 parts per million (ppm), a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has launched a Website that will publish daily readi...
19 Apr 2013: New Solar Cell Process Achieves Record Efficiency, MIT Says Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have achieved a major breakthrough in the conversion of sunlight into electricity , surpassing what was long believed to be an absolute limi...
I don't approve of this genetic modification becoming public. I have to wonder what the KOSHER community thinks about this. Since there are eel genes then it would be not kosher even though we generally consider salmon to be a basic kosher fish. However there is a trepidation in the k...
17 Apr 2013: Outdated Management, Drought Threaten Colorado River, Report Says Drought, mismanagement, and over-exploitation of its waters have made the Colorado River — the lifeblood of the arid Southwest and drinking water source for 36 million people — among the most Pete McBride E...
Environmental activist Billy Parish believes the best way to fight climate change is to fund the renewable energy projects that will supplant fossil fuels. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he discusses how “crowdfunding” can help lead to the widespread adoption of solar power.
15 Apr 2013: Renewable Energy Generated 70 % Of Portugal’s Electricity in Quarter Portugal generated more than 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources of energy during the first quarter of 2013, a record amount fueled largely by hydroelectric and wind energy sources, acco...
Will Global Coal Boom Go Bust As Climate Concerns Increase? The surge in global coal consumption, driven largely by China and India, has climate scientists deeply worried. But environmentalists and a growing number of financial experts say that alarm over global warming may halt the s...
12 Apr 2013: Many Marine Mammal Species Have Rebounded Since U.S. Protections Forty years after the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), no marine mammal species in U.S. waters has been extirpated and the populations of many marine animals are more abundant than in 1972...
Copenhagen’s Ambitious Push To Be Carbon-Neutral by 2025 The Danish capital is moving rapidly toward a zero-carbon future, as it erects wind farms, transforms its citywide heating systems, promotes energy efficiency, and lures more people out of their cars and onto public transportati...
