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…

The deep ocean, the largest domain for life on earth, is also its least explored environment. Humans are now encroaching more vigorously than ever into the ocean’s deep regions, exploiting the deep’s resources and placing its wealth of vibrant habitats and natural services for the planet at risk. Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps…

Technology giant Microsoft has bought the first carbon credits generated under a rainforest conservation project in Madagascar, reports Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which organized and backed the initiative. The deal, which WCS says represents the first sale of government-owned REDD+ credits in Africa, will help finance conservation efforts in Makira Natural Park, an area of…

A new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, shows that if global temperatures were to rise over geologic timescales, trees at higher elevations could play an important role in encouraging more carbon dioxide to be removed from the atmosphere. The team, from the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford, conducted their research in the Peruvian mountains,…

Climate scientists rely on models to predict how the weather and climate will respond to changes in variable such as CO2 emissions, natural methane emissions, solar intensity and a host of other factors. No individual model can claim to accurately predict future climate. So it is very important to look at multiple models and compare…

Although electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles have been considered the only plausible alternatives to conventional cars for a long time, and practically all of the world’s biggest car makers have been investing heavily in these technologies, and governments around the world have been trying to promote the use of such vehicles by offering generous incentives…

Every year waste treatment facilities in the United States process more than eight million tons of semi-solid sewage called biosolids — about half of which is recycled into fertilizer and spread on crop land. The practice helps solve storage issues and produces revenue to support the treatment plants, but what else is being spread in…

It’s Valentine’s Day, and in supermarkets, drug stores and specialty shops across the country, shelves are lined with chocolates of every shape, size and variety. As you browse through endless heart-shaped boxes, consider this: The chocolate industry is in jeopardy, and if things don’t change, there could be a worldwide cocoa deficit by the year…