EarthScape

Plastic bags are perhaps the largest source of waste from our modern consumer culture. Stores give them out without question for all products big and small. Later, they can be found littered on the sides of roads and highways, hanging from tree branches, floating in rivers and clogging up our landfills. Now, a new plastic…

In the wake of a surge in tiger poaching, the state government of Maharashtra, India will no longer consider the shooting of wildlife poachers by forest rangers a crime, reports the Associated Press.

Curry is a generic term primarily employed in Western culture to denote a wide variety of dishes originating in Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Thai or other Southeast Asian cuisines. Their common feature is the incorporation of more or less complex combinations of spices / herbs, usually (but not invariably) including fresh or dried hot…

Take a region where charcoal is the cooking fuel of choice, switch it out for a cleaner burning fuel that doesn’t contribute to global warming quite so dramatically, then, somehow, track the whole thing accurately enough that it’s possible to measure the tons of emissions the switch represents. Finally, sell the avoided tons on a…

The bottom of the sea is dark and lonely. Yet there is life usually isolated and located near some source of energy such as a deep sea vent. these vents are not continuous and in between there is a lot of empty space and totally alien environmental conditions especially between the bottom of the sea…

There are several ways to remove CO2 from a stack gas. None have reached a commercial basis yet due to the expense of the processing. The current method of removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the flues of coal-fired power plants uses so much energy that no one bothers to use it. So…

The majority of Americans (58 percent) think that protecting the environment improves economic growth and creates new jobs. The results are from a recently released poll by Yale University and George Mason University’s climate change communication program. Only 17 percent of the poll’s respondents think that environmental protection hurts the economy and job growth, and…

Two manmade pollutants known best as threats to human health have just been charged with two more offenses: shifting rainfall patterns and mucking with food production. Black carbon and tropospheric ozone, both of which derive from the incomplete burning of fossil fuels, may be working in cahoots with greenhouse gases to expand Earth’s tropical belt…

Environmental scientists have known that high levels of the toxic element, mercury, have been accumulating in the Arctic Ocean for some time. It was believed to be mostly caused by atmospheric sources stemming from the combustion of coal. However, a new study from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard School…

A chick’s chances throughout life will depend on a good environment and good parenting in its earliest months. One of the ways that chicks can get ahead is to have an extra relative looking after them. New research shows that the benefits of having a ‘helper at the nest’ extend even into adulthood.