It may have happened to you. You’re out for a sail and you spot a fin in the water. Someone begins his best impression of the familiar pulsating cello line as another person jokes, “We gotta get a bigger boat,” and talk turns to the film whose release one weekend 38 years ago forever changed…

Icebergs in situ make little noise, right? What about when the calve? There is growing concern about how much noise humans generate in marine environments through shipping, oil exploration and other developments, but a new study has found that naturally occurring phenomena could potentially affect some ocean dwellers. Nowhere is this concern greater than in…

The largest urban rooftop solar program in the nation is underway in Los Angeles, with a five-year goal to power more than 34,000 homes while creating some 4,500 construction, installation, design engineering, maintenance and administrative jobs.

Slight rises in temperatures are triggering rainforest trees to produce more flowers, reports a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The research is based on observations collected in two tropical forests: a seasonally dry forest on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island and a “rainforest” with year-around precipitation in Luquillo, Puerto Rico. The authors,…

Chinese who live north of the Huai River will lose an aggregate 2.5 billion years of life expectancy due to the extensive use of coal burning in the region, concludes a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, which involved researchers from MIT, China, and Israel, estimated the impacts…

Green spaces, trees and bodies of water are must-have design features for future development in Sydney’s suburbs after researchers found that by 2050 global warming combined with Sydney’s urban heat island effect could increase temperatures by up to 3.7°C. The researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science found new urban developments,…

Most of us are aware of the high levels of mercury found in fish. But where does this mercury come from? Humans have been using mercury since before the Industrial Revolution, but it is currently being emitted by coal-fired power plants and artisanal gold mining. And according to researchers at Harvard University, significant reductions in…

A third of the world’s conifers, the biggest and longest-lived organisms on the planet, are at risk of extinction, with logging and disease the main threats, scientists said. The study of more than 600 types of conifers – trees and shrubs including cedars, cypresses and firs – updates a “Red List” on which almost 21,000…

Illegal palm oil expansion inside Indonesia’s Tesso Nilo National Park is threatening protected forests and the reputation of two companies who claim to be sources of sustainably-produced palm oil, says a new WWF-Indonesia report. In its June 26 report, “Palming Off a National Park,” WWF-Indonesia found that over 52,000 hectares of natural forests in the…

Carbon credits are created by emissions controls and by other manufacturing practices and they can be sold to other facilities to offset emissions that cannot be economically reduced. These are attractive when a facility cannot meet a new regulation, and is near the end of its useful life, making it uneconomic to install expensive new…