Using a 13-foot pencil-shaped robot that swam under the grounding line where ice first juts over the sea, scientists saw a shimmery critical point in Thwaites’ chaotic breakup, “where it’s melting so quickly there, there’s just material streaming out of the glacier.”
Climate Change
This Week In Nature: Bison Are Making Nights Brighter on the Illinois Prairie. Guess Who’s Not Happy
New research shows bison are altering the landscape in unexpected ways when reintroduced to Midwest prairie ecosystems.
Headlines spun out of control when it came to new research results on the Earth’s core. In other news, narwhals have had it with noisy neighbors.
It’s a public relations challenge that could determine whether the country meets President Joe Biden’s ambitious goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
Starting Jan. 1, many Americans will qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle. But a complex web of requirements, including where vehicles and batteries must be manufactured to qualify, is casting doubt on whether anyone can receive the full credit next year.
From industrious sharks to the bird of the year, here’s what caught our attention this week on the climate and nature beat.
The fund will award grants in amounts ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 for projects, including energy efficiency upgrades, green infrastructure or the purchase of electric vehicles.
As the price of natural gas rises, it’s prompting some consumer and environmental advocates to call for homes to go all-electric.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced a “major scientific breakthrough” Tuesday in the decadeslong quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.
The federal government has just announced its most significant investment to date in nature-based projects aimed at creating "climate-ready" coastlines, and Chicago is among the communities that will benefit from this latest round of funding.
It’s been another wild week on the nature beat. The United Nations’ biodiversity conference kicked off Tuesday in Montreal with the UN Secretary-General calling humanity a “weapon of mass extinction.” Nowhere to go but up from there.
Every Friday, we’ll be rounding up some of the articles, videos, photos and social media posts that have caught our attention on the topics of climate change, the environment, wildlife, conservation and weather.
It could have been worse, UN Executive Secretary for Climate Simon Stiell said in a seaside interview with The Associated Press. The talks did achieve the historic creation of a fund for poor nations that are victims of climate disasters, he said.
The president’s brief attendance at the United Nations climate conference, known as COP27, was largely a victory lap as he emphasized new spending on clean energy initiatives that will “change the paradigm” for the United States and the rest of the world.
Of the three main types of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — the biggest jump from 2020 to 2021 was in methane, whose concentrations in the air came in with the biggest year-on-year increase since regular measurements began four decades ago, WMO said.
Chicago bills itself as a world-class city, but when it comes to recycling, its performance has been less than first-rate.
