The Case of the Disappearing Bee
Can you imagine breakfast without coffee or life without chocolate? No apples or pears, citrus, watermelon, tomatoes or berries? No grapes for the table or your wine? You may have to because nature’s pollinators are under significant threat of extinction. When most of us think of bees, we think of the honey bee shown above. But the […]
There’s Life in Your Coffee!
Have you ever pondered life over a coffee? It turns out there may be more to life or your coffee than you imagined! Not yours, but entire bacterial communities of it. And they’re in your coffee. A study conducted at the Universitat de València in Spain on coffee waste and coffee machines, has found communities […]
Have we overshot Earth’s carrying capacity?
Human population growth has followed the trajectory of a typical invasive species, says a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, and that suggests there may be a looming global population “crash.” “The question is: Have we overshot Earth’s carrying capacity today?” said Elizabeth Hadly, a professor in environmental biology at Stanford University and senior author […]
There’s a good side to El Niño!
There can be no question that the current El Niño – the worst on record – is having a devastating impact. Large parts of Asia, the Americas and Australia are experiencing extreme drought. So how, I hear you ask, can there be a good side to El Niño? The answer is sugar and palm oil! Less of […]
Our genetic cousins are on life support…
What a sad legacy we are leaving! The Eastern Gorilla, the largest remaining primate, is now critically endangered with a 70% decline in numbers over the past 20 years. There are now less than 5,000 left. They join the western gorilla, Bornean orangutan and Sumatran orangutan who had already been declared as critically endangered. Four […]
To the moon and back will be short in 2016
If it’s not the pale moon that excites us, then it must be the nearness of it. And it will be – literally – when the moon orbits closest to Earth thrice this year. When that happens, the moon will shine brighter and appear bigger than it has in the last 70 years, thus making […]
Radical overhaul needed to halt Earth’s 6th great extinction event
Life has existed on Earth for roughly 3.7 billion years. During that time we know of five mass extinction events — dramatic episodes when many, if not most, life forms vanished in a geological heartbeat. The most recent of these was the global calamity that claimed the dinosaurs and myriad other species around 66 million […]
We’re driving ourselves to extinction!
It has been a contentious subject, but anthropogenic extinction is now a science based reality. “We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on,” according to renown author and scientist, Paul Ehrlich. Winner of the Nobel equivalent, Crafoord Prize, Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford […]
The carbon footprint of your diet!
Watch what you’re cooking – it may turn out to be our planet on your cooktop! No recipe lists Planet Earth as an ingredient. Yet every human activity has an equivalent carbon footprint and that includes the food you eat. An activities carbon footprint is based on the greenhouse gas emissions generated to produce, create or […]
Save energy at home – it’s not just the planet you’re saving!
By guest blogger, Philip La Rosa Sometimes we hear about parents complaining about the population explosion – as if they had nothing to do with the loading of the bomb. Well, the same goes for global warming. We all complain about climate change and how it’s destroying the planet, yet we all contribute to it […]
