EarthScape

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in six consolidated challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA’s”) decision to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases (“GHGs”) from stationary sources under certain provisions of the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”). The cases come from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which dismissed the challenges in…

When an elephant sees another in distress, he consoles him. He touches him to calm him down, using his “trunk to gently touch [his] face.” He may also put his trunk in the distressed elephant’s mouth, much like a chimpanzee will put a hand into a distressed compatriot’s mouth. One author of the study that…

Swedish firm Midsummer, a leading supplier of production lines for cost effective manufacturing of flexible thin film CIGS solar cells, has developed a unique process to recover leftover rare metals such as indium and gallium when manufacturing thin film CIGS solar cells.

World Resources Institute (WRI) yesterday announced the release of a tool that promises to revolutionize forest monitoring. The platform, called Global Forest Watch and developed over several years with more than 40 partners, draws from a rich array of “big data” related to the word’s forests and translates it into interactive maps and charts that…

Peru’s treasured Manu National Park is the world’s top biodiversity hotspot for reptiles and amphibians, according to a new survey published last week by biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (SIU-Carbondale) and Illinois Wesleyan University. The park, which encompasses lowland Amazonian rain forest, high-altitude cloud forest and Andean grassland…

Just the other day I hopped on a natural gas bus to head to downtown Oakland, enjoying one of the East Bay’s many environmentally-friendly public transit options. But how friendly was that bus to the birds, the bees and the trees?

New wind farms have a longer economic lifespan than gas-turbine power stations, according to fresh research that also dismisses claims that ageing wind installations are a bad investment. The UK has a target of generating 15 per cent of the nation’s energy from renewable resources such as wind farms by 2020. There are currently 4,246…

Here’s a race to cheer for: New York and California are neck-in-neck to become the first state to ban microbeads in body wash and other cosmetics. The tiny plastic bits that serve as exfoliants in personal care products are so small that they slip through municipal wastewater treatment, and end up in lakes, rivers and…

New research results suggest that magma sitting 4-5 kilometers beneath the surface of Oregon’s Mount Hood has been stored in near-solid conditions for thousands of years. The time it takes to liquefy and potentially erupt, however, is surprisingly short–perhaps as little as a couple of months.

One in five energy-using products across Europe do not match their energy efficiency claims, according to the Energy Saving Trust. This follows findings from European Commission-funded research which revealed that up to 20 per cent are non-compliant with energy efficiency standards, such as energy labeling. According to estimates, this is leading to around ten per…