In my community in southern Costa Rica, the ceiba tree is sacred. They tower above all the other trees in our forests, with a canopy that can grow up to 230 feet tall. My people, the Beriberi, have always looked upon our Ceiba with awe and respect. Rich countries are now looking at them and […]

For something as chaotic as the wind, meteorologists tend to control very well the kinds of diffuse air patterns we might expect to see causing storms around the world. One that, it seems, has slipped so far under the radar. In an effort to better understand ocean temperature contrasts in the Indian Ocean, scientists have […]

IIn 2020, about 600 meters (2,000 feet) in an underwater canyon off the coast of Western Australia, scientists encountered A tall, gelatinous creature suspended in a giant whirlpool. “It was like a rope on the horizon. You can’t miss it,” says Nerida Wilson of the Western Australian Museum. “It was so huge.” It was a […]

The first global study indicates that approximately one million deaths per year can be attributed to air pollution. The research estimated that nearly half of stillbirths could be linked to exposure to pollution particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), most of which result from burning fossil fuels. The study included 137 countries in Asia. Africa […]

The Minister for the Shadow Environment and leading wildlife groups said the government would not be able to meet its naturalization targets by 2030, even though it was “embarrassingly poor”. Next week at the Cop15 Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Alex Sobel will discuss the “Science-led Joint Action Plan to Address the Climate and Environmental Emergency.” […]

DrDespite being the largest flying bird in North America, with a wingspan of up to three meters, I was hard pressed to see the California condor in the wild in the 1980s. In a last-ditch effort to save the birds, after decades of persecution and population collapse, the few remaining were captured in 1987 for […]

Although many Americans still associate the winter holidays with chestnuts, the tree that once produced them–the American chestnut–no longer does, except in a few rare instances. During the first half of the twentieth century, billions of chestnut trees died from a strange fungus, which was brought to this country on Japanese chestnut stocks. The loss […]

Was the work done net zero? That question would have sounded silly a year ago at the UN-sponsored COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, where some of the world’s most famous banks, airlines and carmakers flaunted their pledges. To be part of a net zero emissions future. UN envoys welcomed the fact that at least a […]