Environment

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is something of a holy grail for an energy industry that has to lower the amount of carbon it pumps into the atmosphere.  And unusually, the problem is not that scientists and engineers do not know how to do it.  As Lynden Archer, a …

There is a meme that occasionally turns up in Facebook newsfeeds that goes something like this: “It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it …

We have long known that elderly rich white men are the group most likely to deny the existence of man-made climate change.  And in a statement of the blindingly obvious last week, the Black Lives Matter campaign pointed out that poor Black and Asian people in developing countries (and to …

There’s nothing quite like turbulence to trigger an adrenaline rush in the average airline passenger.  And according to climate scientists, changes to air flow in the upper atmosphere will cause more and stronger turbulence above the Atlantic Ocean in future: “It is predicted there will be more and more incidents …

From Hurricane Sandy to the ‘sunny-day flooding’ in Norfolk, Charlestown and Miami Beach, the evidence of sea level rise is increasingly obvious.  Nevertheless, the US Congress continues to deny the reality of climate change, and even at the state level, officials have taken to pulling the blinds down to avoid …

The urgent need to address climate change was in the news last week.  Global temperature records continue to fall, with 2016 shaping up to be the hottest year on record; with every chance of exceeding the 1.5°C upper limit agreed by world leaders in Paris less than a year ago.  …

For the best part of 40 years, the climate debate has split across a broadly left (liberal)/right (conservative) divide in which the left argue that we need urgent action to prevent runaway global warming while the right questions the validity of the evidence.  Meanwhile, businesses and households carry on with …

US Republican candidate Donald Trump has been widely attacked for his environmental credentials; including his professed support for the fracking industry.  However, in an interview for 9News Trump has set out a position that is more democratic than the current policy position of the UK government. While thousands of protestors …

Enormous gas bubbles trapped underground are causing areas of grass in Siberia to tremble like trampolines, according to Jess Staufenberg in the Independent: “Methane gas, which is twice as potent as carbon dioxide in warming the Earth’s atmosphere and is usually locked beneath permafrost, is reportedly being released as warmer …

The World Meteorological Organisation has warned that the first six months of 2016 have seen several climate records broken: “Arctic sea ice melted early and fast, another indicator of climate change. Carbon dioxide levels, which are driving global warming, have reached new highs.” Carbon dioxide concentrations have now passed the …