By Michaeleen Doucleff21 April 2015 (NPR) – Looks like many of us don’t have the right stomach for a paleodiet. Literally. Two studies give us a glimpse into our ancestors’ microbiome — you know, those trillions of bacteria that live in the human gut. And the take-home message of the studies is clear: Western diets […]
By Chris Clarke22 April 2015 (KCET) – Some new figures have been published about the likely wildlife impact of a controversial solar facility in the Mojave Desert by biological consultants working on contract with the plant — and the numbers are startling. According to the firm H.T. Harvey and Associates, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating […]
By Yang Jiang, Mercedes Ekono, and Curtis SkinnerJanuary 2015 (NCCP) – Children under 18 years represent 23 percent of the population, but they comprise 33 percent of all people in poverty.1 Among all children, 44 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families. Being a child […]
By Perry Lindstrom20 April 2015 (EIA) – For the second year in a row, energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States have increased. However, unlike 2013, when emissions and gross domestic product (GDP) grew at similar rates (2.5% and 2.2%, respectively), 2014’s CO2 emissions growth rate of 0.7% was much smaller than the […]
By Gayathri Vaidyanathan23 April 2015 (Scientific American) – Slivers of dust float in the upper atmosphere, scattering the sun’s rays back into space and cooling the planet in some places. In other places, the particles warm the planet. The equivocation has meant that the particles, known as aerosols, are a significant wild card in our […]
By Tanya Lewis24 April 2015 (Business Insider) – Earth Day, which was on April 22 this year, is a time to celebrate and protect the pale blue dot we call home. But some of its crown jewels may be vanishing. Many parts of the globe face threats from warming temperatures, sea level rise, drought, and […]
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and JEFF DONN 16 April 2015 OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) – A blanket of fog lifts, exposing a band of rainbow sheen that stretches for miles off the coast of Louisiana. From the vantage point of an airplane, it’s easy to see gas bubbles in the slick that mark the […]
20 April 2015 (NBC News) – Apple is more energy efficient than it ever has been, according to a new report, with 100 percent of U.S. operations running completely on renewable energy. Still, the company was responsible for 34.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in fiscal 2014 — the vast majority from manufacturing […]
By Magdalena Mis; Editing by Tim Pearce 22 April 2015 LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than 100,000 people in Vanuatu have no clean drinking water, a month after a monster cyclone struck the tiny Pacific nation, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday. Two thirds of the archipelago’s water and sanitation infrastructure […]
25 April 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – The Wall Street Journal continues its long tradition of printing editorials that reject the findings of climate science. On Earth Day 2015, we were treated to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, rolling out some old denialist chestnuts, to criticize proposed […]
