“Snowmageddon” was predicted – three feet of snow, blizzards whipped up by high winds, a freeze of the whole transport system. What New York got was “snowperbole”. Yes, it snowed, but not as badly as predicted…
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Environment – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 3776 - 3800 of 4510 articles
The stunning colours of coral attract many divers to the world’s reefs but, for us coral scientists, one mystery has always remained. Swimming over a reef, you can frequently spot brightly coloured coral…
Gaze out from the deck of a boat and you will see an ocean that was, in Henry David Thoreau’s phrase, “equally wild and unfathomable always”. There’s a stark contrast in appearance here between the apparently…
Arctic sea ice melts each summer, reaching its minimum extent sometime in September, before refreezing through the winter. Over the past 35 years, the September sea ice extent has reduced by about 35…
The “thirst for oil” is often put forward as a near self-evident explanation behind military interventions in Libya, for instance, or Sudan. Oil, or the lack of oil, is also said to be behind the absence…
David Cameron might have been forced into accepting several restrictions on fracking to avoid a Commons defeat, but one thing that has never appeared in doubt is the Conservative party leadership’s commitment…
The US Federal Trade Commission issued a report on the “internet of things” this week. It announced: Six years ago, for the first time, the number of “things” connected to the internet surpassed the number…
Western liberal democracies believe that in difficult political decisions science serves as a referee and arbiter of truth. Scientific knowledge can indeed inform and narrow the scope of policy choices…
Carbon dioxide is the “face” of the greenhouse gases, but nitrous oxide (N2O) merits its own spotlight. The same “laughing gas” once used by dentists as an anaesthetic and used today by people looking…
Smartphones may have been around for a while but demand for digital traffic is still growing fast. During the new year celebrations, mobile providers in the UK and Australia reported a 50% increase in…
We’re in the midst of fevered discussions about communications and security. Cybertarian campaigners want to stop collusion between corporations and governments to intercept citizen chat; attention-grabbing…
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs set off an intense heat wave that briefly boiled the Earth’s atmosphere – but it didn’t burn off all the plants. Humanity has not been unlucky enough to observe…
Scientists tell us that the world is warming and greenhouse gas emissions are to blame. Yet climate change framed by scientists, politicians and economists as a straightforward pollution problem will neither…
The international gas market was once constrained by pipelines and long-term trade deals. Now, it is rapidly globalising. Cross-border trade and investment in gas is growing, and national gas markets are…
There is a side to the Ebola crisis that, perhaps understandably, has received little media attention: the threat it poses to our nearest cousins, the great apes of Africa. At this moment in time Ebola…
In the flurry of the holiday season, many people will have missed the government’s verdict on the 2014 badger culls, published on December 18. Farmers’ representatives have branded these recent culls “successful…
The feeding habits of an unusual 200-million-year-old fish have been tested in a ground-breaking study published in Palaeontology. This research is particularly notable as it wasn’t carried out by a leading…
It is often said that if something is repeated often enough, it becomes accepted as true. This has certainly been the case for the link between terrorism and the poaching of elephants for the ivory trade…
There aren’t many animals high up in the Himalayas, but the odd bird passes by. Each year bar-headed geese (Anser indicus) travel from their breeding grounds in China and Mongolia to spend winter in the…
The Earth’s climate has always changed. All species eventually become extinct. But a new study has brought into sharp relief the fact that humans have, in the context of geological timescales, produced…
Climate change will cause all sorts of problems for humans in the future. It could cause mass migration and conflict as people flee flooded homes or arid farmland, and fight over ever more scarce resources…
Southern Africa’s game farms are private reserves that house wildlife such as giraffes, zebras and antelope to be used for restocking national parks, meat production or trophy hunting. But these farms…
To take a look at the cars on your street, it might not be apparent that the automotive industry is going through one of its most dramatic periods of change. Yet rising purchasing power in emerging markets…
The dairy sector in the UK is going through a period of high uncertainty. Not only are suppliers having to cope with retail price wars and the fact that milk prices are being reduced by the increasing…
As wind power companies venture into ever-deeper waters, the traditional windmill-style turbine may not be the most suitable solution. It’s time to look at alternatives. Wind turbines traditionally had…