Environment

From 5,000 to 11,000 years ago, what is now the Sahara Desert had 10X the rainfall it does today and was home to hunter-gatherers who lived in the region's savannahs and wooded grasslands. By analyzing marine sediments, rainfall patterns in the Sahara during that 'Green Sahara' period have been pinpointed. The work is more incremental than discovery, the existence of the Green Sahara period was already well-known, but this is a continuous record of the region's rainfall going 25,000 years into the past and it bolsters archaeological evidence which found that humans occupied much of the Sahara…

Though environmental activists are aghast that Republicans now control the White House, the Senate and the House for the first time since the 1920s, at least a few have come to some self-awareness that non-stop lobbying against jobs and poor people, and for higher regulations and cost, are to blame for why their candidate lost. What they don't realize is that there is actually a great deal of opportunity for environmentalists during the Trump years. In most ways, he is a lot more like Democrats than he is like Republicans, they just need to stop being against everyone and everything except…

How can we predict the climate so far ahead when we can't do an accurate weather forecast even ten days ahead? Well it is remarkable that we can forecast our weather even one day ahead, and by looking at how the forecasters do that we can begin to understand how the models can work over longer timescales. When I was a child in the UK in the 1960s, with our unpredictable weather, a cautious person would take rain gear with them almost no matter what the forecasters said. Even as late as 1987 we had Michael Fish's famous weather blooper. This broadcast is so famous here that it starred in the…

How can we predict the climate so far ahead when we can't do an accurate weather forecast even ten days ahead? Well it is remarkable that we can forecast our weather even one day ahead, and by looking at how the forecasters do that we can begin to understand how the models can work over longer timescales. When I was a child in the UK in the 1960s, with our unpredictable weather, a cautious person would take rain gear with them almost no matter what the forecasters said. Even as late as 1987 we had Michael Fish's famous weather blooper. This broadcast is so famous here that it starred in the…

Back to Square 1 - First Steps in Climate Science Step 1 - we humans discover that the Arctic accumulates more heat on a summer's day then the equatorial regions. Step 2 - we realise that our atmosphere is heated not so much directly by the sun but by heat from the surface. George Best not the footballer  circa 1580 Step 3 - we discover that heat and light are two separate forms of radiant energyÉmilie Du Châtelet - An Essay On Heat - 1739 Step 4 - we discover proof of ice ages Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer Step 5 - we prove that George Best was correct - we demonstrate…

Donald Trump has just been elected as US president, as a Republican climate skeptic. So if you are from the US you may get the impression that this is a political debate between “lefties” who think climate change is real and “righties” who think it isn’t. But it’s only in the US that there still is a political debate at all. Here in the UK for instance it has cross party support, and we have a right wing government who have just ratified the treaty. For us, it was a matter for debate a decade or two ago, but the debate was already over some years back. We've decided action is needed, and…

A mathematical model that assists in decision-making at a facility devoted to the cultivation and production of the common mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) has received the prize for the best scientific contribution during the 2nd International Food Operations&Processing Simulation Workshop, FoodOPS, held in Larnaca (Cyprus). This methodology means that the consumption of resources and emissions can be reduced and the productivity of an agri-food facility improved. The authors of the article, published in the proceedings of the international congress, have developed a mathematical model using…

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), one of the nation's largest environmental groups, which has been bankrolled with $50 million from the heirs to the Walmart fortune, has spent millions of dollars pushing a wholesale change in how the U.S. manages its fisheries, to the detriment of fishermen and with no benefit to nature Environmental Defense Fund is implicated in ruining fishing communities on every coast, from Kake, Alaska, and Gloucester, Mass., to Bayou La Batre, Alabama, though catch share systems are also blamed for knocking thousands of fishermen out of the industry, usually because of…

Substantial environment impacts due to rejection of GM canola Canada approved GM canola in 1995 and following 2 years of seed multiplication, farmers started growing GM canola in 1997. By 2004, 75% of canola farmers in Canada were growing GM varieties. After a decade of GM canola production I surveyed farmers and found the following:  canola farmers’ income increased by $350-400 million a year; the environmental impact of the chemicals applied to canola dropped by 53% when compared to the chemicals that were previously used on canola; the volume of chemicals…

In a Youtube video that has been viewed more than 25 million times,  George Monbiot explains with masterful clarity How Wolves Change Rivers. The short film tells the story of Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced in 1995 after an absence of 70 years. Heralded as a successful example of "trophic rewilding" (Svenning et al 2015) - whereby missing "trophic levels" in the food pyramid are re-installed to exert top-down control- the returning wolves are credited with controlling numbers and behaviour of herbivores (elk), thereby allowing vegetation to return. This then…