News
Researchers connect earlier spring to climate change
Every spring, as the weather warms, trees up and down the East Coast explode in a display of bright green life as leaves fill their branches, and every fall, the same leaves provide one of nature's great color displays of vivid yellow, orange, and red.
Thanks to climate change, the timing of those events has shifted over the last two decades, Harvard scientists say.
How Earth avoided global warming, last time around
Geochemists have calculated a huge rise in atmospheric CO2 was only avoided by the formation of a vast mountain range in the middle of the ancient supercontinent, Pangea. This work is being presented to the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Sacramento, California.
Around 300 million years ago, plate tectonics caused the continents to aggregate into a giant supercontinent, known as "Pangea".
Paris climate talks to draw up to 50,000
As many as 50,000 people are likely to attend the December 2015 talks in Paris aimed at forging a UN pact on climate change, host France said on Tuesday.
"Between 40,000 and 50,000 people from 195 countries are expected," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters at the site in Le Bourget, just north of the French capital, where the talks will be held.
Ecologists suggest 'ecological energetics' for conservation
Ecological energetics integrates information about species’ physiological limits, such as metabolic cost of thermoregulation, digestion, growth, locomotion or reproduction, with biotic and abiotic ecological constraints of the environment in which it lives.
A research group led by the University of Western Australia and Kings Park and Botanic Gardens is championing 'ecological energetics' as an essential tool for ecologists in understanding rapidly changing ecosystems.
‘The future starts now,’ Ban says at launch of UN Decade of Sustainable Energy for All
5 June 2014 – Launching the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today hailed modern energy services as the source of profound and life-changing opportunities – for the poorest communities and the richest investors – and urged generating the innovative ideas and vital partnerships to wholly transform the global energy landscape.
“We are here because we understand that sustainable energy is central to the post-2015 sustainable development agenda,” the UN chief told the first annual Sustainable Energy for All Forum, which opened yesterday in New York and wraps up tomorrow, aiming to generate momentum for Mr. Ban’s eponymous 2011 initiative that brings together governments, civil society and business to make sustainable energy for all a reality by 2030.
Launch of Ocean and Climate Platform 2015 at UNESCO to mark World Ocean Day
World Ocean Day will be celebrated on 8 June under the banner of “Together we can Protect the Ocean”.
At UNESCO’s Paris Headquarters, the event will be marked on 10 June with the launch of the Ocean and Climate Platform 2015, which will bring together the research community and civil society with the aim of placing the ocean at the heart of international climate change debate. The platform is being launched ahead of the next Conference of Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Convention (COP21), which will take place in Paris in November 2015.
Algae biofuel can help meet world energy demand, researchers say
Microalgae-based biofuel not only has the potential to quench a sizable chunk of the world's energy demands, say Utah State University researchers.
It's a potential game-changer. "That's because microalgae produces much higher yields of fuel-producing biomass than other traditional fuel feedstocks and it doesn't compete with food crops," says USU mechanical engineering graduate student Jeff Moody.
Wood waste biofuel could cut greenhouse gas
A sustainable biofuel made from Norwegian forest wood waste could help transform the shipping industry and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
lternative sustainable fuels are urgently needed in the marine transport sector due to stringent upcoming regulations demanding reduced sulphur and carbon content in diesels and oils from January 2015.
