While the diesel landscape is in flux, the U.S.’s abundance of propane means price stability for autogas. When you grocery shop, you plainly see the price of items. And you feel certain those prices won’t change before you get to the register. What if that wasn’t the case? What if you went to the store […]

In 2011, after an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi power plant, Gregory Jaczko, then the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had to worry about two things: whether radioactive fallout would harm the U.S. and whether a similar accident could befall an American plant. The answer to the first question […]

Handwritten journals from 50s show how plastic problem has grown to global emergency A trove of data showing when the Atlantic began choking with plastic has been uncovered in the handwritten logbooks of a little-known but doggedly persistent plankton study dating back to the middle of the last century. From fishing twine found in the […]

New government report shows just how bad things have gotten in recent years. When I first moved to New Zealand 2.5 years ago, I was struck by a few things. For one, the wider public seem to know – and care – a lot about the environment. The people I met could tell me the […]

A new study by researchers from NASA has verified the accuracy of recent global warming figures. The team used measurements of the ‘skin’ temperature of the Earth taken by a satellite-based infrared measurement system called AIRS (Atmospheric Infra-Red Sounder) from 2003 to 2017. They compared these with station-based analyses of surface air temperature anomalies — […]

Drone imagery of coral patches along the coast of Maunalua Bay, Oʻahu, where researchers in the Marko Lab use coral DNA from filtered seawater to assess coral cover on local reefs. Photo courtesy of Patrick K. Nichols. Scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Biology have developed a technique for measuring the […]

Plastic floating in the sea is costing human society “hundreds if not thousands of billions of dollars” every year, including loss of tourism revenue and reduced productivity. The “perceived risk” of the contamination of seafood with microplastic may also be detrimental to the seafood industry, whilst the presence of marine litter can impact physical and […]

Plastic pollution is an urgent issue that is harming the planetary ecosystem, killing marine life, and impacting land animals as well as communities. While we can do our best to avoid plastic and reduce our reliance on plastic products, a shift on an industry level is needed. Nestlé, for instance, produces 1.5 million tons of […]

On March 17, 2002, the German-U.S. satellite duo GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) was launched to map the global gravitational field with unprecedented precision. The mission lasted 15 years, more than three times as long as expected. When the two satellites burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere at the end of 2017 and beginning […]

Recycling rates have been dropping on Oahu. While the cost of the program has been rising…thanks in part to contaminated recyclables in those blue bins. Recycling rates have been dropping on Oahu. While the cost of the program has been rising…thanks in part to contaminated recyclables in those blue bins. Everyone has a reason for […]