All posts tagged Environment
Weekly Science Picks
Greetings one and all, and a very happy science Sunday to you! This week’s generally been quite interesting. We’ve had good news, bad news, a little heated discussion… All the kind of things which keep the science community vibrant and [...]
How to green the desert and reverse climate change
“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend [...]
The Carbon Footprint of Australian Migrations
Measuring the impact of Australian migration on the Australian carbon footprint is a difficult task because of the complexity of the factors involved. However, a direct cause and effect relationship between the two exists, and it is related partially to [...]
Weekly Science Picks
Women. This is the theme of this edition of Weekly Science Picks. Yesterday, in case you missed it, was International Women’s Day. And it is important to note the achievements of women in careers such as teaching, neuroscience and engineering [...]
Greenland ice core records provide a vision of the future
Ice cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheet, recounting the history of the last great warming period more than 120,00 years ago, are giving scientists their clearest insight to a world that was warmer than today. In a paper published [...]
The Highlights of 2012
As 2012 draws to a close and the new year begins, now is a good time to wrap things up and recapitulate the year just passed. It’s been an exciting year with plenty of interesting happenings in science, technology, and [...]
Breaking plates
What do Australia and India have in common? The answer is that they both share one of Earth’s tectonic plates – the drifting eggshell-like pieces of Earth’s crust, on which all of our planet’s continents sit. However, the Indo-Australian Plate [...]
Adapting Drinking Water Resources to the Impacts of Climate change in Europe – ADWICE Stakeholder Exchange Conference 2012
The ADWICE Stakeholder Conference will take place on 2 October 2012 in Brussels, Belgium. The event will offer a platform for dialogue for understanding the vulnerability of drinking water resources, water quality and water abstraction infrastructures to local, national and [...]
The Devil’s Technology
Biotechnology is rarely considered to be good for the environment. In fact, environmental campaigners frequently claim that genetically modified organisms represent a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystems. However, the study of the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour disease (DFTD) using [...]
The extinction that is yet to come
By 2050 they will all be gone. The worst is yet to come. The Amazon rainforest contains a wider variety of plant and animal life than any other biome in the world. The region in its entirety is home to [...]
Plastics Make it… Problematic
The American Chemistry Council sponsors an initiative “Plastics Make it Possible.” While there is no debating the fact that plastics have completely transformed modern life, from lifesaving medical devices to cellular phones to food storage to sports equipment, to well, [...]
Fly the Clean Skies
Next week, Qantas Airlines will use cooking oil to power a flight from Sydney to Adelaide, in what will be Australia’s first biofuel-powered commercial flight. On April 13, the Airbus A330 test will consist of a “drop-in” fuel, meaning that [...]
The Future of Energy
The 7th Annual MIT Energy Conference held March 16-17 in Boston, MA, was an all-around inspiring event filled with conversations of hot topic scientific research and intense policy discussion. It was impressive, considering this event is entirely planned and executed [...]
Car batteries–impact on environment
With cars being irreplaceable and indispensable parts of our lives their every-day usage brings up the question of their influence on our environment, to be more precise the impact of car batteries on the environment. Basics: An automotive battery is a type of rechargeable battery that [...]