Month: September 2014

  • It’s important to ventilate if you are cooking with gas!

    Cooking with gas is preferred by many cooks to alternatives. The popularity of “professional” stoves and cooktops with high-output burners makes cooking more fun perhaps, but those high-output burners also put out more contaminants. It is important to recognize this and to properly ventilate the cooking area with a hood that vents to the outside,…

  • Causes of California drought linked to climate change, Stanford scientists say

    The atmospheric conditions associated with the unprecedented drought currently afflicting California are “very likely” linked to human-caused climate change, Stanford scientists write in a new research paper. In a new study, a team led by Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh used a novel combination of computer simulations and statistical techniques to show that a persistent…

  • Connecting Productivity of Office Workers and Climate Change

    Energy efficiency in office buildings struggles to gain the attention of top management, writes John Alker – because energy is too cheap to really matter. But with 90% of operating costs spent on staff, a new report shows that green building design makes employees happier and more productive. There would seem to be no connection…

  • Climate change more of a risk to the Greenland Ice Sheet than thought

    A new model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge has shown that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested, which would accelerate the rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities worldwide. In addition to assessing the impact…

  • Some good news for the oceans!

    Good news for aquatic life: the oceans just got a little bit safer. Okay, so most of the ocean remains vulnerable to human devastation, but on Thursday, President Barack Obama used his authority to create the most massive ocean reserve in the world. In a single day, the amount of the world’s ocean protected from…

  • Reducing global trade would cut carbon emissions

    If the world’s leaders really cared about climate change, there’s one easy way to reduce emissions, writes John Weeks – drop the obsession with increasing trade, and all the pollution that goes with it. A world based on local production, consumption and finance will be a better one for people and the environment. Let us…

  • Cornell finds molecule in space that connotes life origins

    Hunting from a distance of 27,000 light years, astronomers have discovered an unusual carbon-based molecule – one with a branched structure – contained within a giant gas cloud in interstellar space. Like finding a molecular needle in a cosmic haystack, astronomers have detected radio waves emitted by isopropyl cyanide. The discovery suggests that the complex…

  • ‘Transponders’ from Japan was ashore along US West Coast

    Northwest anglers venturing out into the Pacific Ocean in pursuit of salmon and other fish this fall may scoop up something unusual into their nets – instruments released from Japan called “transponders.” These floating instruments are about the size of a 2-liter soda bottle and were set in the ocean from different ports off Japan…

  • A concrete idea: MIT develops better, greener, concrete

    Concrete is the world’s most-used construction material, and a leading contributor to global warming, producing as much as one-tenth of industry-generated greenhouse-gas emissions. Now a new study suggests a way in which those emissions could be reduced by more than half – and the result would be a stronger, more durable material. The findings come…

  • Goats found to be better than chemicals when it comes to curbing invasive marsh grass

    Herbivores, not herbicides, may be the most effective way to combat the spread of one of the most invasive plants now threatening East Coast salt marshes, a new Duke University-led study finds. Phragmites australis, or the common reed, is a rapid colonizer that has overrun many coastal wetlands from New England to the Southeast. A…