environment

"Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow. Science has been greatly successful at explaining natural processes, and this has led not only to increased understanding of the universe but also to major improvements in technology and public health and welfare." -National Academy of Sciences It’s no secret that peering out into the distant Universe is best done from space, just as looking at our entire world is best done from that same vantage point. For all of human history until the mid-20th century, this was an…

"The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return." -Carl Sagan Here on Earth, we hear every so often about a conspiracy of how the world will come to an end. The end of the Mayan calendar; Y2K; an encounter with Nibiru; or a biblical prophesy come true are only a small selection of what people “predict” will bring a demise to our world, and soon. Yet even most of the…

"In terms of weapons, the best disarmament tool so far is nuclear energy. We have been taking down the Russian warheads, turning it into electricity. 10 percent of American electricity comes from decommissioned warheads." -Stewart Brand Arguably the greatest advance of humanity — and the cause of the greatest increase in our quality of life — in the past few centuries has been the widespread availability of electrical energy. It powers our homes, our industries, our automobiles, our places of business and more. Our world runs on energy, with the world using upwards of 155,000 TeraWatt-hours…

The last one of these was in mid-June, so we're picking up all the summer stories of scientific mayhem in the Trump era. The last couple of months have seemed especially apocalyptic, with Nazis marching in the streets and nuclear war suddenly not so distant a possibility. But along with those macro-level issues, Trump and his cronies are still hammering away at climate change denial, environmental protection, research funding and public health issues. As exhausting as it seems -- and this is part of the plan -- amongst all of us opposed to Trump, we need to keep track of a wide range of…

"Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this." -Michael Eric Dyson Hurricane Irma has, as of this morning, knocked out power to more than 6 million, caused the evacuation of millions more, and has caused flooding and extreme wind damage across hundreds of miles across Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. When Irma first made…

"We have to understand the ubiquity of energy in everything we do. Energy is core to our economy and it brings with it environmental challenges, and it's core to our security challenges." -Ernest Moniz In 1953, then-President Eisenhower, in the aftermath of World War II and with rising tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union resulting in a nuclear arms race, began the “Atoms For Peace” plan. The idea was that all nations should be able to reap the benefits of nuclear power, while simultaneously keeping the world safe from nuclear war. While the same ingredients can be used for both…

“That's a misconception, Lennie. The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.” -Jandy Nelson There are all sorts of explanations that people give for why the sky is blue. Some say that it’s because of the fact that oxygen is a light blue gas. Others contend that the sky reflects the blue ocean, giving it a comparably blue color. Still others place the blame on sunlight itself, alleging that it’s naturally slightly blue in color. All of these science-y sounding explanations, compelling though they might be, are way off the mark. If they were correct, after all, you wouldn’t have reds during…

"I'd rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you." -Tom Watson On September 2nd, a group of teenagers were lighting fireworks in the Columbia Gorge near Eagle Creek. They would light them and attempt to throw them into the river, playing a game of "let’s try to almost-but-not-quite commit devastating arson.” Guess how that game ended? With a catastrophic wildfire that, four days later, now engulfs over 10,000 acres, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people,…

"The hurricane flooded me out of a lot of memorabilia, but it can't flood out the memories." -Tom Dempsey As I write this, the gulf coast is currently being battered by Hurricane Harvey, with a few locations already having accumulated more than three feet of rainfall. This storm shows no signs of letting up anytime soon, as it's forecast to remain roughly where it is for days to come. This is being billed as a 500-year-storm, but the truth is far scarier and more sobering: this should be exactly what you'd expect for a city located where Houston is. The new rainfall scale created by the…

"All that is now All that is gone All that's to come and everything under the sun is in tune but the sun is eclipsed by the moon." -Pink Floyd No matter how well-prepared you were for your first total solar eclipse, no amount of reading or photograph-searching could do the experience justice. There were so many things to feel, see, and be overwhelmed by that you literally needed to be there to relate to. Yet it was remarkable how many things there were that surprised scientists and skywatchers alike. There is no special filter necessary to bring out the pink coronal loops near the very edge…

“I'm old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn't been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles.” -Pat Cadigan When it comes to health, safety, and how we interact with the world around us, pretty much everyone recognizes the importance of making our decisions based on sound science. Yet even when presented with the same evidence, many people will draw different conclusions. Why? Because once we’ve made up our minds that something is either good or bad for us, we cherry-pick the…

"I'd rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you." -Tom Watson The solar eclipse we've all been waiting for is just two weeks away. Yet even though you've got your eye protection ready, your location picked out, and your plans all set, there's a wild card you need to be aware of: wildfires. The total solar eclipse in Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming-west-of-the-rockies coincides with peak wildfire season, and with over a million people headed to a 70-mile-wide strip of…

"Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are - rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call 'global challenges,' which require global solidarity." -Ban Ki-moon Earlier this week, the executive editor of the Heartland Institute published a declaration that he was a climate change skeptic, and put forth the six major reasons why this was so. These reasons were well-thought-out, specific, and best of all, subject to analysis. So, what better way to test the science than to do that analysis, and to see where the chips fell? Correctly calibrated…

"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." -Ralph Waldo Emerson The enterprise of science is one of the most misunderstood in all of society. Some view it as its own religion; others view it as a political ideology gussied up in smart-sounding clothes; still others view it as open to interpretation. But science is none of those things, and is rather the full suite of knowledge humanity has accumulated along with our process of discovery, investigation, and ongoing hard work. Astronaut candidates Tyler N. (Nick) Hague, Andrew R. Morgan and Nicole A…

Samples of fish species from the Poeciliidae family show the diversity in color, fin size and body shape. Kansas State University researchers studied 112 species of these live-bearing fishes and found that males and females evolve differently. Image courtesy of Kansas State University Dr. Michael Tobler and Dr. Zach Culumber at Kansas State University examined 112 species of live-bearing fish (Poeciliidae) and have made some interesting discoveries about their evolution. Their analyses included information on body shape, fin size, where the species are found and information on global…

"I would argue that in any habitable zone that doesn't boil or freeze, intelligent life is going to emerge because intelligence is convergent." -Simon Conway Morris Someday, in the far distant future, the evolution of the Sun will cause it to heat up and emit so much energy that the Earth’s surface will reach a terrible threshold: 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit). When this happens, the oceans will boil away, rendering the surface completely uninhabitable and inhospitable to even the most extreme known forms of life. If we do nothing to prevent it, then at some point over the…

"There is, then, no water that is wholly of the Pacific, or wholly of the Atlantic, or of the Indian or the Antarctic. The surf that we find exhilarating at Virginia Beach or at La Jolla today may have lapped at the base of antarctic icebergs or sparkled in the Mediterranean sun, years ago, before it moved through dark and unseen waterways to the place we find it now. It is by the deep, hidden currents that the oceans are made one." -Rachel Carson Later this year, one of the most epic Earth-monitoring missions of all time, the NASA/NOAA collaboration JPSS-1, will launch. With a suite of five…

"One volcano puts out more toxic gases - one volcano - than man makes in a whole year. And when you look at this 'climate change,' and when you look at the regular climate change that we all have in the world, we have warm and we have cooling spells." -John Raese Every year, dozens of volcanoes actively erupt across the Earth’s surface. In addition, other active volcanoes continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and even dormant volcanoes and other fissures in the Earth contribute to our overall carbon dioxide content. If we want to understand the effects that humanity is…

“Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.” -George Carlin When you think of helium, you very likely think of balloons, birthday parties, and blimps. But this inert, lighter-than-air gas has a number of unique properties among all the elements, including that it’s liquid at very low temperatures and it enters a superfluid state. It’s scientific applications include particle accelerators, MRI machines, and anything…

"Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it." -Mike Huckabee It only makes sense that scientists should debate and argue over the findings in their field. Given all the suites of data available that are relevant to a particular physical phenomenon, how do we put it together in a way that is scientifically robust, allow us to understand and predict what’s happening, and justifiably attribute the causes of observed…